


Of Elbereth's Bounty

by Gloromeien



Series: In Earendil's Light Trilogy [3]
Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-18
Updated: 2017-09-18
Packaged: 2018-12-31 01:37:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 150,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12121716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gloromeien/pseuds/Gloromeien
Summary: Third in the In Earendil’s Light series. In the dulcet wilds of Valinor, Elrond’s three rambunctious grandchildren come of age, finding love and adventure along the way.Disclaimers: Characters belong to that wily old wizard himself, Tolkien the Wise, the granddad of all 20th century fantasy lit. I serve at the pleasure of his estate and aim not for profit.Author’s Note: Two houses, both alike in dignity, in fair Valinor, where we lay our scene. Yes, well, the whole thing’s gotten completely out of hand!! Cannon characters worked so well together, that they begot multiple OMCs, who then begged for their own proper tale. Think of it as Romeo and Juliet for Male Elves, with star-crossed lovers, a fair amount of quarrelling within the families, but, do not fear, there will be no life-taking of any kind. It does, however, help to no end to have read both In Earendil’s Light and Under the Elen before this, as otherwise you might not recognize any of the characters. Hope you enjoy, and thanks for keeping to the path thus far!!





	1. Prologue and Part 1

Of Elbereth’s Bounty

 

Prologue

Of the Fourth Age of Men and of the reign of peace in the mortal land of Arda, there exists ample account. 

A gust of wind spattered his scroll with thistle down, yet Erestor kept on his writing, heedless of the auburn sun. The ship bound for Arda would sail in the first breath of twilight, ten volumes of his own composition kept in its coffers. The author of such an esteemed history could surely scrawl off a letter before sunset. 

The many tomes of mannish, halfling, and dwarven provenance have long gifted the Loremasters of your land with a proper record. Yet little is known of the fate of the Eldar, long sailed to Valinor, to their native soil. Those that sailed were numerous and noble born; they have forever altered the course of this dulcet shore with their precipitous return. Two colonies were settled therein: Telperion in the southern forests and Laurelin in the north wood, the mountains between bisecting but not severing their reunited peoples. This first is led by a High Council, chief among them Elrond, legendary Lord of Imladris. The northern realm is wilded still; none, as yet, claims its counsel, though Thranduil, King of Mirkwood now makes his berth there. 

This keeper of records humbly offers your vaults a history of these times, to hearten the elven people still lurking in your hollows and to lesson the race of men, who has forgotten its heroes. Most compelling of all, in my learned estimation, is a song of love and longing which opens the third book. This gentle tale, more than any other, marks the resilient spirit of our present age. 

Be blessed, mellon-nin, under bounteous Elbereth,

Erestor Cirdanion  
Loremaster of Telperion

* * *  
Part One

In the swell of a radiant afternoon, the elves strolled in itinerant pairs down to the riverbank. Thrushes trilled in the long grass by the water rush; a stone-ridge path across the lively river acted as a delta, sieving out the salt foam from the ocean far beyond. This region of Telperion wood was but a half-day’s hike from the sea shore, the raucous tides of which nourished the gigantic, silver-trunk mallorn trees. The mallorn height was such that even the most cunning interloper might rest a decade in the forest deep without discovering the elven colony that thrived far above. 

Two of the highest and most becoming trees lay on either side of the river, their mighty bows entwined as the rapt fingers of long-bound lovers. Even the keenest elf had trouble discerning which branch belonged to which of the twin trees, as each had sprung from the same seed, bedded deep beneath the river. Though in the midst of Lord Elrond’s family compound, none in twenty years of occupancy had been able to tame the brother trees into hospitality; none, that was, until this very time. 

Glorfindel lingered in the cooling shade of a nearby elm, as the High Council assembled in the glade beyond. Fluffs of down, from the nearby thatch of willows where Legolas and Elrohir made their home, wafted through, carried by the humid midsummer breeze. The glade and the elders were soon blanketed as if by a sun-kissed winter, one might mistake them for a gathering of snow-furred rabbits. The pique of his bemused smirk did not dull the monument of the occasion, the first council assembly away from the hearth-hall of Lord Elrond’s abode. 

As the elders seated themselves, formal robes billowing regally through the long grass, Glorfindel looked around the trunk, into the shadow of the elm thicket, at the cause of such an esteemed collection of sages. There, clutching his rolled-up designs like a life-preserver and quaking with alacrity, loomed his youngest son. The architect, rather, of their entire compound, wooer of tempered trees, horticulturalist of bountiful touch and premier glass-blower of their colony, also, but not least, a builder of growing renown, as evidenced by the re-location of the High Council simply to accommodate his equally renown shyness. Which, to Glorfindel’s dismay, only appeared more acute since he’d last checked on him.

The Balrog-slayer glanced back at the ready assembly, then again into the shroud thicket. The truly genius, in his experience, were often of a solitary nature. Such were the master craftsmen in Gondolin of old, many of whom he had counted among his most trusted friends. The loyalty of these tender ones was often unparalleled; secrets confided to those that rarely spoke were never repeated and their unique, oft misunderstood perspectives bequeathed them a wealth of compassion for other troubled souls. Glorfindel, in those tempestuous times, had often sought out the peerless consolation of these lonely ones. Once lured from their self-involvement they had been, he reflected, the sweetest of lovers. 

Yet Echoriath, though months before his second majority and blessed with a skill for every one of his hundred years, kept no company beyond that of his brother and cousin. With Tathren away adventuring for nearly a decade and Cuthalion’s own social group stealing the larger share of his time of late, this more than naught left the darkling elf alone with his orchard, his collection of rare plants, or his drawing easel. He had begged his fathers for reprieve from the rites of his first majority; now that his second was swiftly upcoming, Glorfindel didn’t doubt that it would precipitate a round of abject begging from his youngest son. Loathe as he and Elladan were to force rites on any elf, let alone their peach of a child, they had long discussed whether they should, perhaps, nudge him in the right direction. If his majority passed without even the barest effort on their part, then he would grow to full elfhood in solitude and so, they believed, he would stay for time immortal. 

The very seam of Glorfindel’s re-fashioned soul would snap, if this gentleheart went his life untouched by a loving admirer. 

At that moment, his own love-teacher and husband dear ambled into the shaded thicket, his knowing eye taking measure of his still-shuddering son’s temperance. Elladan had long been this blithe one’s confessor; as this, Echoriath soon hearkened to him, thirsty for reassurance. 

“There are so many,” the young builder remarked in his usual breathless tone. “I had not thought…”

“The High Council wishes to oversee the development of this project,” Elladan explained. “From forest immaculate to tree-top sanctuary complete. Besides, you require their approval.”

“But grandsire-“

“Ada is Lord of Telperion,” Elladan reminded him softly. “But he is no King. The council members must see for themselves, if they are to properly weigh-“

“But this is our land,” Echoriath objected, with as much fervor as this quiet one ever mustered. “Where we make our home. As long as we do not harm the trees…” He left off when Cuthalion came to fetch him, knowing too well that his vivacious twin would broke no argument from him. 

Dismayed, he pulled out of Elladan’s arms and retreated into himself. 

“If you would not go to the mountain,” Cuthalion bellowed with his usual pomp, as he clapped his brother on the arms. “The mountain has come to you!! No other in Aman could assemble such an esteemed audience, I wager.” 

“It is grandsire’s boasting that has brought them,” Echoriath mumbled, blushing as ever. 

“If Tathren were here, you would not simper so,” Cuthalion reproached him, receiving, and deserving, a pointed look from Elladan. 

“Yet he is not,” Echoriath sighed, a faint annoyance further coloring his cheeks. Ever shrewd, he knew, despite any continued protestation on his part, that there would be no escaping this sobering task. With characteristic benevolence, the darkling elf silently fortified himself, then slipped a trembling hand into his twin’s. “But you are here, as ever, to steady me, gwanur.” 

At this hush compliment, the silver-haired elf shone like a mithril shield. 

“Come,” he beckoned, taking firm hold of his brother’s arm. “I will stand with you before the Council.” 

Though the tremors that shook his lithe frame did not abate, Echoriath humbly followed a trumpet-tongued Cuthalion into the glade of lazy-eyed elders. After turning his ponderous eyes towards their presentation, Glorfindel was surreptitiously enveloped by the welcome arms of his husband. He glanced aside; Elladan’s argent eyes regarded their youngest with such anxious pride, with almost disbelieving admiration, that Glorfindel would have embraced him were the audience not settled and the speakers to begin. As Echoriath outlined his plans for the calamitous site in a near-whisper, the gathering stilled, so that not a sound or reverberation of his low, rather voluptuous voice was missed. Glorfindel marveled, as he often did, that the elves of this region were so witless as to let such a heart go without champion, such a blithe spirit go unspoken for. 

Once acclimated, if not comfortable, with the spotlight, Echoriath could not mask his nurturing nature, nor his keen mind, nor his affinity for the task. As he bashfully related how he patiently wooed the permission of the implacable twin trees - for no elf could build in a tree’s bows without its affection, he made note of various innovations to talan design that were necessary to accommodate their wishes. That these difficulties were rendered into an edifice of such incredible beauty, eliciting a gasp from the assembly, was no small tribute to his son’s craft. Two separate talans, one in each tree, were joined by a bridge of unprecedented height and girth, as its two stories housed a garden-lined pathway above and a glass-bottomed bath below. Indeed, the whole structure was made of entirely natural material, only such accoutrements as faucets, mirrors, and utensils were made of metal. The flooring of the bottom tier, including the pool, was translucent, so that one appeared to walk over the coursing river below. The effect, if realized, would be edifying, as would be the star-plucking and branch-stroking walkway above. 

The bachelor apartments, though of Echoriath’s design, were a present from Glorfindel and Elladan to their sons upon their coming adulthood. After their second majority, they were no longer required to reside with their fathers, but the compound had no other housing for them. Ambitious despite his reticence in social matters, Echoriath had wanted to develop his savvy as master of a company of builders. Though he was yet without said company, the family was confident that the intricacies of his designs would soon draw volunteers, with the Council’s linchpin approval. 

By the end of his explanation, not an elven soul in the glade was any less than awestruck; Lord Elrond included and Cuthalion, perhaps, most of all. Their bedazzling apartments may have been conceived by Echoriath, but their intention wasn’t merely to further his career. They were, above all else, a acknowledgment of their unbreakable bond, a gift, from the deep of his heart, to his beloved brother. As the Council swarmed together for an immediate decision, buzzing like a smoked-out hive, Cuthalion wove an arm around his weak-kneed twin, as Echoriath swooned with relief. 

The silvery elf was, for once, near voiceless. “I… I am unworthy of such an honor, gwanur-nin. Surely our betters must reside here, and we… we will take another home.” 

Echoriath visibly withered at his words, mistaking them for disapproval. “The design… has not pleased you.” 

“Nay, it is *too* beautiful for one such as I,” Cuthalion was quick to counter, knowing how dreadfully his twin had anticipated his dislike. “Not in Arda’s majesty nor in Aman’s divine splendor have I seen such a place… it is fit for kings, not a simple horse-breeder. You, Echoriath, are stately enough for its fine halls, but I…” 

“If you would not reside here, with me,” Echoriath put the matter plain, hugging warmly to his brother. “Then I have no heart to build it. It is for us alone that I envisioned these apartments, that I gentled the trees. I will have no other neighbor but you, gwanur.” 

Speechless, Cuthalion could naught but nod his acquiescence. Rare were his brother’s public displays of affection; he would not dishearten him now for all the gold in Thranduil’s coffers. 

The Council broke to admire the designs up-close, clucking their approval like guinea hens. Glorfindel and Elladan soon joined with their cheery sons, both fathers taking a moment with Echoriath. Glorfindel remarked, as he whispered his astonishment, the calm that had descended upon his youngest child. A glimmer, though faint, of self-satisfaction shone in the gold wash of his eyes; Glorfindel had not afore realized how dearly he’d wanted this chance before the Council, for all his bashful objections. There was, though closely kindled, some temerity waiting to fire within him. 

Yet who, he wondered, might ignite it? 

A shout from Cuthalion broke the spell. The spritely elf blazed a streak through the long grass, then, in the roar of his excitement, tackled his rather ragged looking cousin to the ground. Tathren threw the giddy elf off, only to embrace him fully upon their rising. In the years since their advent in Valinor, Tathren had taken to adventuring. His latest absence, from which he’d just this moment returned, had stretched on for eight years, though he sent frequent word back home. From the look of his tattered tunic, he’d not yet even breached the willow thatch and greeted his fathers. 

Glorfindel waited on his youngest son’s less fervent, though equally feeling, remonstrance at the sight of his cousin - as Tathren was second only in his heart to Cuthalion - but, to his surprise, Echoriath stilled. His golden eyes, full as harvest moons, beamed wonderingly on the adventurer’s fair countenance, as if disbelieving the sight of him. They remained locked on the approaching elf, until Tathren stood before him, still fighting off Cuthalion’s incessant, playful shoves. 

“Echoriath,” he greeted him with a resplendent smile. “How have you fared these long years, nin bellas?” 

Without a breath in reply, Echoriath leapt into his arms. He hugged his cousin with such force that Tathren bit his lip to keep from crying out, though he gladly bore this charge, his eyes moist with feeling. For some time, neither seemed willing to release the other, until his family, in deference, turned away. Glorfindel, however, kept a sharp eye on his timid son, as Tathren staggered around to maintain his balance. 

“Tathren,” he at last heard Echoriath whisper, as his golden eyes slid shut. 

* * *

The fluidity of the motion, to those with eyes to discern its machinations, remained the gold standard even in lofty Valinor, the form as eloquent as the archer himself. Even his lover-teacher - once his better, now his husband - could not match him for speed, precision, or distance. 

Though the carvings that adorned his leather quiver told of a title he no longer claimed and some of his arrow fletches were feathered with colors to which he no longer bore allegiance, the knowing archer never gave up the first bow he’d broke in nor the weaponry bequeathed to him on his second majority. The leather strap had been fitted to his very shoulder; the stave engravings heralded the sharp-shooter’s name, more than a few still embedded in the corpses he’d felled. The blood of a thousand battles was seeped into their tanned hide, some porous fletches were still grimed with mumakil gut. 

Yet this hallowed archer among the woodland elves and first among elfkind this day faced a challenge unlike any he’d met before. How to lose to his son without appearing to do so. 

Like his shining crown of hair, though of a deeper hue, his iridescent blue eyes, though of warmer tone, and his mercurial disposition, though without such earth-shattering cares, Tathren’s back had been measured by his father’s hand, which had also crafted the quiver he bore. Together, they had strung the stunning silver bow he now held - gift of Gimli - and smithed the arrowheads. Through years of patient tutelage, the master archer had passed on every trick, feint, and form in his arsenal; Tathren had thusly come to know Legolas’ technique better than his own, which only added to the stress in playing-out their current, *unofficial* wager. For Legolas could guide his son in every secret of this, his finest art, except one: he could do nothing to circumvent the limitations of his heritage. 

No peredhil, not even one trained by a master archer, could ever best one of purely elven skill. Once grown, Legolas had easily matched Elrohir, soon to best him. Despite his every effort, his son would eventually be out-struck, as Tathren was, like his grandsire, equally halved between elf and man, while Elrohir gave only a quarter of his making to mankind and gained some spark from the Maiar in his distant ancestry. Thus, their casual contest was swiftly provoking Tathren’s fairly indefatigable will, though the young adventurer knew well he’d never likely best his Adar. 

One was, after all, not lightly heralded the finest archer of this age and the last. 

There was, however, more to archery than steel and skill alone. Stealth, as his bold Ada-Las had oft reminded him, gave advantage to the vital element of surprise. With this in mind, Tathren’s angular face turned pensive, as Legolas’ hawkish eyes surveyed his mark. Patient as a chess-master, he considered each ring of the target in turn: the angle in which the arrow had entered, the depth of the strike, the effects of its fletches on his own shot’s velocity. Decided, he stretched his bow into stance, then took aim.

“Ada,” Tathren cleared the path for his coming question with studied nonchalance. “May I inquire after… a matter that is perhaps not my affair, but… to which my thoughts have lately turned?” 

“Surely, ioneth,” Legolas allowed him, as his first strike hit true. “Has your mind gleaned towards more country matters, now that you are come home?” He beckoned his son’s confidence with a soft smile, then refocused on the waiting target. 

“In time, perhaps,” Tathren answered, swallowing a smile of his own. His features turned painfully sober and he fought to keep his manner so. “I fear you will be cross with me, if I intrude upon…”

“I cannot think of a matter between Ada-Hir and myself,” Legolas guessed ruefully, as his second shot bisected his son’s stave. “That I would not speak on with you, tathrelasse. Fear not.” 

“Very well,” he agreed, as Legolas set sights on his crowning blow. The young adventurer’s eyes, despite his best efforts to contain himself, were tinged with delighted mercury. “Why have you and Ada-Hir never begot another child?” 

For the first time since elflinghood, Legolas shot wild. Precipitously cast under a baleful glare, Tathren bit his tongue through to contain his mirth. Though he at once both admired and reviled his son’s tactics, Legolas was relieved somewhat by his cunning. Yet he did not for a moment doubt the sincerity of Tathren’s question. He and Elrohir had not deceived their son about the manner of his begetting, but they had tempered the tale considerably. Even forty years into his majority, Tathren was unaware of the more unsavory details of Legolas’ manipulation, though he knew Thranduil was to blame and had come to understand his father’s estrangement from the Mirkwood King. 

“May *I* ask, ioneth,” Legolas ventured cautiously. “On what occasion your thoughts wandered down this path of inquiry?” 

“In truth, I have often wondered of this,” he admitted. “In younger years, I envied Echoriath and Cuthalion their twinship. It seemed everyone had a twin or a brother but I! My cousins, Ada-Hir and Ada-Dan, Grandfather - though his is lost - speaks often to me of Elros, Luinaelin was your chief counsel in Ithilien and Mithbrethil is now, though he lives in the north. I cherish my cousins as my own brethren, but I… I always hoped. Seeing them in the glade the other afternoon, how Cuthalion supported his brother and the magnificent apartments Echoriath had imagined them… I was reminded.” 

“Are you truly so lonesome, nin ind?” Legolas inquired in hush tones, somewhat abashed by his son’s revelation. 

“Nay, I am luckier in some aspects,” Tathren noted, with a diplomacy worthy of the elf-knight himself. “I have the singular regard of two hallowed fathers.”

“That you do, my brave one,” Legolas beamed, but did not forget his solemnity. He sighed, as only a longtime parent might, in face of this daunting explanation. How to relate a husband’s cares and vows to one who has never been bound, nor even found love? “I will give an honest answer, though it may not be the one desired. The betrayal of your most beloved is… I would not wish this task on my most hated foe, not the wolves of Mordor nor the snakes of Isengard. Your Ada-Hir is… is of fea so generous, so immaculately rendered that he found, in his boundless spirit, a way to forgive my accidental transgression. I know not, to this minute, how he accomplished this. I fear I myself could not.”

“Truly, Ada?” Tathren countered, shocked by his father’s severity. “Even for a child of his siring? If you agreed to its begetting, would a night’s anxiety truly be so steep a price to pay for…? I think not to unsettle you, Ada, I know this is no affair of mine. Yet I often think on Echoriath and wish that… that I might have a brother or sister blessed with Ada-Hir’s gracious disposition, to temper me. I esteem him so, I esteem you both *so*. You have been such… such fathers…” 

Despite his best efforts to internally dismiss the matter, Legolas was piqued by Tathren’s reasoning. As he embraced his dearest son for his rare, and heartening, compliment, his curiosity soon amplified in intensity. A child of Elrohir’s twilight seed, whether ellon or ellyth, proved too-worthy fodder for his distraction. Unlike Tathren’s calamitous first years, this promised one would be raised under their full, dual attentions, no wars, colonies, or titles to encumber the joys of their parenthood. Glorfindel had reason not to beget another child for Elladan, but why should Elrohir never know the precious bond between sire and sireling? Why, for that matter, should Legolas’ misbegotten jealousy deprive both of them of the company of such a tenderheart, of a babe of his Elrohir’s making? If Glorfindel could put aside his compunctions for a lonely night, surely Legolas could, as well. 

There certainly was no question of their bond’s sundering, as Elrohir was by far the most doting creature known to Aman… 

Legolas slowly became aware of Tathren’s befuddled examination of the shadings of his reasoning face. He colored some, another rarity, though the young adventurer took this, as everything, in easy strides.

“You think not on my proposition,” he winningly teased his elder. “Merely on begetting-practice with my other father. I know well your fever has not waned in nearly five hundred years.” 

“Your scorn, though merely in jest, betrays your innocence, nin ind,” Legolas remarked pointedly. “You best pray to Elbereth you are one day so bountiful as we in binding love.” 

With that, Legolas tapped the tip of his bow and gestured towards the waiting target. No longer so fearful of besting his precocious son, he was, if anything, eager to show his mastery. 

In this, at least.

* * * 

The orchid vine was sickly. Even the most obtuse of elemental elfkind would note the wrinkles in her spade-shaped leaves, her jaundiced petals, the dry droop of her scarlet tongue. The patient, however, had every chance of making a full recovery from her withering, if her medic had his way. 

After he padded into the flickering pool of torchlight under the far arch of their glass-domed greenhouse, a fine-balanced tray of oxtail stew and lembas crackers wedged beneath his sword-arm, Elladan observed, with no little wonderment, as Echoriath meticulously slid a bamboo stand behind the listless stem. Two sets of pincers – one prick-pointed, one blunt – adjusted each leaf stalk to its supportive bamboo branch as minutely as an archer improves his aim, his bow tautly strung. The blooms themselves were reinforced with egret feathers, so as not to chafe their delicate silk. 

In the hot, hazy hall around them, the pulp-enriched soil was bedded with dozens of rare plants, shrubs, and flower vines, the most varied collection of chronically beset vegetable species known to both Arda and Aman. The dome itself was lined with specially layered glass, designed to focus Arien’s most potent rays on the most needful buds and shield others in perpetual gloaming. The ground itself was portioned out into distinct mixtures, separated by thick, slated paths: the red soil of the heartland fields to the east, coarse, volcanic earth to the north, to the west the alabaster shale of the seashore, in the center, fertile forest mulch. 

In the southward arch of the dome was stationed a small alcove of tools, charts, books, a water hole and a humble cot, where Echoriath could oft be discovered, after a late night of caretaking. The gardener’s devotion to his fragile charges was such that he was known to spend easily four nights a week in the greenhouse, when not collapsed against the drawing-board in his bedchamber, candle still fuming beside. Glorfindel and Elladan, in more aggravated moments, had often threatened to remove this cot so as to increase their son’s share of rest, but had never carried this out; reminded, time and again, that he would simply sleep on the floor where he fell. Nor were their attempts to properly nourish him altogether successful, as many a dinnertime was forgotten in the rapt examination of some new root, the sowing of an exotic seed, or the weeding of one of the more shaded beds. 

Indeed, Elladan was presently on just such a mission with his tray of stew, bread, mead, and berries. While Echoriath ministered to the orchid vine, his father reflected that the return of Tathren’s jovial society had added some actual fleshiness to his painfully slender form, as his cousin’s presence was enough to lure him back to their regular evening meal with Elrohir and Legolas. This night, however, Celebrian’s poorly orchid would overtake his entire night, as Echoriath would not have his grandmother suffer a moment’s despair over the withering of her prize plant, one he himself had gifted her. That such tenderness underlay each of Echoriath’s preoccupations and activities – the replenishment of the forest that caused him to collect rare blooms, the sanctity of their people that pushed him to tend orchards and gardens, the importance of balance between elf and nature that made him a builder of environmentally-sound habitations – deeply heartened Elladan, as well as forgave some of his son’s more obsessive tendencies, though his warrior’s spirit often struggled to understand how he could find solace in such seemingly rote tasks. Echoriath, however, heard the call of the land like a clarion bell; he felt that not a moment of his time was wasted in even the most menial chore. Before long, his son’s dedication forced even Elladan’s unruliness to see the heart in every mended stem, every fat orchard fruit, and every log of a willow-shroud cottage. 

If only Echoriath could open such a heart to another’s fateful song, Elladan little doubted what a pure harmony might ring forth. 

When Elladan cleared his throat, Echoriath perked up. Despite his self-imposed seclusion, his eyes went wide at the sight of the stew; Elladan’s keen elven ears marked his stomach’s anticipatory whine of deprivation. He quickly wrapped-up his preliminary work on the orchid, then skipped off to his alcove, where he was surprised to find Elladan waiting on him. His father, though always attentive to him, had little patience for horticultural talk; after awhile, his bow-stringing fingers would unconsciously begin to twitch and Echoriath would switch to more engaging remarks about architecture. When Elladan motioned to the seat beside him, the young elf was immediately on his guard. His day had been long: showering the rain-starved gardens at dawn, a morning of tallying the supplies needed to begin the apartments, an afternoon of sacrificing the first of the ederwood trees – always a heartbreaking task for him - and fumigating the orchard against parasites; lastly, the drama with his grandmother’s beloved vine. 

With the routine checking on all of her plants thusly added to his already overburdened schedule, Echoriath prayed the topic of conversation his Ada quite obviously wished to broach was not the one he had been studiously ignoring for nigh on a week: the coming of his second majority and his ongoing virginity. However, as he wolfed down the too-delicious meal – Serabeth had blended in his most preferred melding of spices - his Ada-Dan remained so copiously silent and unblinkingly poised that Echoriath knew there would be no escaping the stealth of this most cunning of swordsmen. Not that his father’s counsel was ever unheeded. Indeed, while his Ada-Fin’s strengths lay in matters of honor, education, and work-related troubles, in his experience his Ada-Dan was deceptively wise in matters of more private concern. In the past, his darkling father had long-suffered his own tempestuous affections, this made him a kindhearted and too-knowing advisor. 

For Echoriath was perhaps unready to map the outlay of all the chambers of his too-vast heart. 

“Is that a gray birch I spy, in the north patch?” Elladan asked suddenly, sparking his ponderous son’s attention. “I thought there were but silver and white in Valinor.” 

“There are, indeed,” Echoriath gladly answered. “I thieved a root from Imladris, afore we departed. The tallest gray, by the deep forest path, towards the training fields. Do you recall it, Ada?” 

“Too well,” Elladan smiled inwardly, as Echoriath tucked in beside him. Despite his cloying shyness, the young elf was fearlessly affectionate with his family, often thriving on their touches and embraces in more fractious situations. While Cuthalion had grown too proud, with age, to huddle up to his fathers, Echoriath had no compunctions about laying a weary head on Elladan’s shoulder, as he did now. “It was beneath that same gorgeous gray that I first kissed your Ada-Fin.” 

“Truly, Ada?” Echoriath queried, pleasantly surprised by this revelation. 

“Aye, to seal our betrothal,” he replied, wondering that he had never mentioned the anecdote before. “He had been strolling with Erestor, whom I craftily dispatched of by noting Haldir’s impending arrival in the valley. When we were alone, I… I had never before felt such… such dread!! Had he refused me, I may have done something rash.” 

“W-was it…?” Echoriath began, then thought better. Yet his Ada-Dan had never confessed such intimacies to him, nor perhaps would again. Seizing the moment, he ventured: “Was it… a… a sweet kiss, Ada?” 

“The most blithe and thrilling I had ever known,” Elladan admitted. “Soon to be bested by the kiss that sealed our binding, but this first will always hold a special place, as it was the result of over two thousand years of longing.” 

“Two *thousand* years?!” Echoriath gasped. “Merely for Ada-Fin’s kiss?” 

“Your Ada-Fin’s kiss is no mere thing to me, ioneth,” Elladan explained, turning nostalgic. “We were longly parted, since just before my first majority. Your Ada-Fin was… concerned… by the feelings I roused in him. I was of such a tender age and he was, after all, my tutor and sworn guardian. I was merely forty years old and already there was… heat, between us.” 

“What stayed him so long?” Echoriath wondered. “If I may ask…” 

“Before our kiss?” Elladan considered. “A mixture of wartime duty and… well, a guardian’s fears. Shame, over esteeming someone so young, so… fragile. My heart was desperately tender, like one of Nana’s lovely orchids. Though, to his credit, he was unaware of my own caring for him, so he cannot be wholly blamed for his absence. He thought to keep his own heart, as well as mine, from hurting.” 

“But you won him in the end,” Echoriath reminded him, pensive. “You knew your heart, even so young.” 

“Aye, I did indeed,” Elladan noted, vowing never to recount to him the full, tortuous tale. “Though knowing your heart is at times more painful that the fancyfree fumblings of youth. Before our reunion, even the moment before that after-altering kiss… I never believed he would regard me with such favor. Mine was a sober minority. As you, ioneth, I chose to forgo rites upon my first majority.” 

“You did?!” Echoriath started, springing up in his seat. 

“I had, rather foolishly, thought to have Glorfindel as my lover,” Elladan confessed to his wide-eyed child. Shrewd as he was, he did not fail to mark the tenor of his son’s resulting compassion. /So there is one whom he desired, and could not attain./ Elladan had to swallow back the question pressing his too-nimble lips, needing the name of the sordid elf so that his blade might slice him through. “Upon my second majority, I saw the fruitlessness of my pining, and decided that, if I was to win the Balrog-slayer’s heart, I might learn a thing or two about loving.” 

Echoriath sighed heavily, the timely occasion of this particular conversation becoming painfully apparent. He collapsed anew onto his father’s shoulder, groaning even as he rolled his eyes back. 

“*Ada*,” he mused, as Elladan chuckled at his theatrics. “I would not lie with a… a stranger for experience’s sake!” 

“I have not, nor would I ever, suggest you lie with a stranger, ion-nin,” Elladan amended. “Ada-Fin and I are merely… We are concerned that you are not acquainted with the other young elves of the community and therefore… they are as strangers to you. How are you to know love, even the brief, playful affections of youth, if you keep council only with your family?”

Though he could not counter this reasoning, Echoriath chose a different tact. “I know my own heart, Ada.” 

Despite his best efforts at gentility, Echoriath began to tremble against him. Though he knew the subject to be excruciating at best for his youngest son, Elladan and Glorfindel were decided that they could not let his majority pass without at least some soft push towards increased sociability. If Echoriath were allowed to hide himself away into his adulthood, he would potentially be lost to the world forever. Immortality was too long a time, and too high an emotional price, to seclude your heart from loving. 

Elladan drew a fortifying breath, then pressed on. “And has this well-examined heart been humbled by soft regard for another?” 

Echoriath stilled, then retreated from his father’s warmth. “Perhaps.” 

“Could it not, then, for the sake of foreknowledge,” Elladan quietly suggested. “Consider exploring other avenues of desire, in order to properly welcome he or she to whom it cleaves so tenuously?” 

“He,” Echoriath whispered, but would give no more to his father’s fantasies of vengeance. 

“A maid, then, might interest you, without dishonoring your pledged love,” he continued. “My one regret, upon your begetting, was that I never knew a maid until that fateful night.”

“Nay, I could not,” Echoriath dismissed, visibly trying to temper his sharpness. Though he could not voice his displeasure at this near-examination, and thus disrespect his father, he was despite himself growing rather irate. “I care not for maids. They hold no… They are pretty, in their way, but they… They are too… pliant.” 

“You would have some conviction,” Elladan teased him, to temper the mood. “Some… force, perhaps? Sinew, not supple. Sensuous, but brusquely so. Grace, but no fluttery, no swooping, unless it be rapacious and… sundering.” 

Echoriath flushed as scarlet as the orchid’s tongue. 

“Aye,” he rasped, avoiding his father’s bemused, hawkish eyes. 

“The explorers are newly returned,” Elladan pointed out, with a casualness that was almost insulting. The seed planted, he rose. “There are some hale and hearty sons among them. Fine-boned, muscle-strewn… handsome youths, on the whole.” 

“Ada!!” Echoriath yelped, despite himself. The images his father so disturbingly conjured were not new to him nor his recent daydreams. 

“I will leave you, then, to ponder their… potential,” he laughed outright, then grew solemn. He knelt before the youngling’s clenched frame, then laid penitent hands on his knees. “Know this, my lovely one. Ada-Fin and I only wish the finest and truest mate for your careful heart. Indeed, as fathers we are comforted by its cautions and its considerations, but let it not deliberate too long on choosing its course. At times, the only way to brave the rapids is to give in to the current’s flow, mindful of the rocks ahead.” 

Consoled by this last wisdom, Echoriath’s amber eyes met with his father’s placid grays. “I am grateful, as always, for your counsel, Ada.” 

“And I, as always, admire your prudence, ioneth,” Elladan murmured to him. “Yet love, as I myself learnt quite terrifically some years ago, is oft beholden to risk.” 

With that, Elladan slipped away, leaving Echoriath to his garden’s solitude.

 

End of Part One


	2. Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A sojourn at the seaside evokes strange, long-dormant feelings in both our young elves.

Part Two

As the sterling sun white-washed the sky above, draping a gauzy veil of haze over the hallowed peaks of Taniquetil to the north, the ocean spread out before them like a sheet of rippled mercury. The shore beneath, with its bleached sands, rose and fell with dunes as unctuous as silk, ivy rips of seaweed embroidered into the fine-grained weave. A warm flush of wind, thick with spray, draped a becoming sheen of perspiration over Echoriath’s already heat-glazed skin, though, sobered by this first glimpse of the ocean, he paid the humidity little mind. 

Far across the mirror-sleek surface of the sea lay the land that had born him, shaped his character as a hammer batters well-layered steel into sword. Though many times he yet felt formless, abstract, as fluid and scorching as molten ore, he knew the more scarring aspects of his shyness had been cooled off by Valinor’s quenching grace and his potential polished by the pestle-grind of constant opportunity. He found he missed little about brute, melancholy Arda, excepting his mother’s shrewd care. As none among his current confidants were of another Elf-Lord’s House, his troubles festered as an untended wound; were it not for the grind of routine, his current affliction would soon turn gangrenous and beg amputation. 

Yet Echoriath would sooner cut out his heart, than forsake the solace of Tathren’s hopelessly platonic regard.

In a coup worthy of an elfling Legolas, they had stolen him away. Duties aplenty awaited the young adventurer and his exploring party upon their return: an audience with the High Council, the needful attentions of their parents and siblings, not to mention the hundred ale-hall friends that tipsily awaited their glorious tales a-ringing. After a fortnight of placating by day and revelry by night, Tathren had looked fit to depart anew, so Cuthalion, and by default Echoriath, had spirited him away to the ocean shore, where in earlier years they’d often camped overnight, a brief respite from the at times encroaching forest hollows. Unlike their fathers, these three were secret mermen, covetous of an afternoon splashing through the surf, riding the wicked waves, and diving straight into the sea’s deeping swell. 

As he tore his sallow eyes from the serenity of the view, Echoriath was confronted by a sight of equally heart-stirring splendor, though he fought to stifle the surge that resulted within him. Eager to swim, Tathren had already shed his roughshod raiment for the paltry concealment of his thigh-cut leggings, the ocean’s spite being too coarse for complete bareness, or so Echoriath both thanked and cursed the Valar. Though the golden elf had not further matured in his eight years away, his adventuring had sculpted him a limber, sinuous frame of such simmering forcefulness that Echoriath could not help but swallow hard. Unlike his own lithe body, where few traces of his faint mortal heritage remained, Tathren was fully blessed with a peredhil’s hardiness: his shoulders wide, his collar regal, his chest strewn as a cornsilk field, and his hips of a swagger that could swoon a harem of wantons. Echoriath prayed that he did not turn, for a mere glimpse of that flaxen sheath of hair, of his sleek back and of his taut buttocks would instantly unman him, if not veritably cause him to flee in shame. 

If he had resolved, in the hush of his alcove, to forget his desire and focus elsewhere, the vertiginous heat this vision roused in him soon boiled the last of this resolve off into the mist. He had long suffered the knowledge that even the barest hint cottoned by another of his forbidden attraction had consequences more dire than the singe of Mount Doom’s perilous flames: banishment from Tathren’s ever-constant regard, his brother’s abandonment, his fathers’ abasement, even the Valar’s unrelenting vengeance. On the nights he most loathed himself, he had begged them for a sign, a telling star, some notion of why they had so beset him with this wretched fever. Though it was, in truth, not mere lusting, but a regard so dear, so cutting in its blundering innocence that it daily stabbed him through. He would never dare reveal himself, but he could never truly forget this one, this only one, never truly quit his care for gallant, giving Tathren. 

As if to further sink the smiting dagger in, the piercing inquisition of Tathren’s jewel-shard eyes suddenly shifted towards him. 

“Are you well, Echo?” he inquired, ever concerned. He had learned, through ample years, that it took little to unmoor his bashful cousin’s balance, even in deceptively common instances. 

The darkling elf tugged his own tunic over his head to conceal his cheeks’ incipient burn. Cuthalion’s sharp gasp greeted his emergence from the garment’s folds. 

“*Ai-ya*,” his twin bleated, as if a curse. Soon two pairs of sapphire eyes assaulted him. “Gwanur, what has become of you?” Echoriath was confused, and no little disquieted, by his strange words. “You are thinned near to withering! Your frame is so… so meek, your pallor sickly... your ribs like…” Cuthalion, aghast, could say no more. 

“Talion!!” Tathren snapped, but the damage was done. 

Echoriath purpled with hurt at his catalogue, his head precipitously bowed, his startled gaze swiftly buried in the sand beneath him. He studiously avoided sight of his apparently twig-like ribs and his sickly-pale chest. He never had considered himself particularly fair, even doubting the veracity of others’ comparisons to the lush features of his Ada-Dan, but to be so confronted with his avowed mousiness before one as honeyed and hale as Tathren shamed him fiercely. He grappled once again into his tunic, desperate to hide, but was stilled mid-motion by a firm, yet staying, grip. 

At Tathren’s careful urging, the tunic was soon disposed of; Echoriath found himself but inches from the blonde beauty. He crossed his arms over his chest, cowered as best he could. 

“Methinks you have bedded too many heavy-bosomed Sindar maids, Cuthalion,” Tathren repliqued knowingly. With a gentility that belied his boldness, he raised Echoriath’s chin up and met his moist eyes with a smile of luxurious fondness. The darkling elf trembled, but did not dare pull away. “While your sturdy frame steals readily from both elf and man, Echoriath’s slenderness merely favors elfkind. The Noldor are particularly sleek, as a rule, with skin of a pearlescent purity by starlight. The sun’s harsh shine may disservice him this day, but he is far from sickly.” Awed by his cousin’s tenderness, Echoriath easily allowed his arm to be snatched from its berth and bent over itself. “You see? Here is proof enough of his stealthy might. No elf tames such unruly gardens, nor keeps orchards of such splendor without merit of strong, unforgiving muscle.” To Echoriath’s own astonishment, the evidence was there displayed, a bulge so round and vehement even he was heartened. Without bother to comment, Tathren’s fingers then skipped up his packed abdomen, with nary a jutting rib in sight. “I, myself, favor lovers of such twilight grace. Under Ithil’s cool regard, he would be as immaculate the silmaril.” 

Though his color was tamed to merely a hot crimson, Echoriath remained unsteady, equally light-headed and lead-bowelled under Tathren’s kind blue eyes. 

“Forgive me, gwanur,” Cuthalion sighed, his face ashen. “I only thought-“

“With your spleen,” Tathren retorted, wrapping a protective arm around Echoriath’s bare shoulders. “Perhaps the tide will smite your ardor, gwador, so that we might later hunt with some stealth.” Cuthalion snorted, but well received the message. He would mend things with his brother among the waves. For the moment, he left the task of coercing the shy elf into his swim-hose to his gentler cousin and raced towards the sea. 

Without another word, Tathren reached behind Echoriath’s woozy head and flicked open his hair-clasp, a mithril clip in the shape of a favored Mirkwood bloom his cousin had himself gifted him. Caught in the near-embrace of Tathren’s own meaty arms and a fugue of the adventurer’s raw, dizzying musk, Echoriath fought to keep himself from sinking into the golden down of his chest, into the balming heat of his generous spirit. Tathren continued his unbidden ministrations by unlacing his braids, soothing sword-calloused fingers through his raven hair and over his tense scalp. Echoriath bit back a groan; one glance at Tathren’s concentrated face telling of his obliviousness to the darkling elf’s plight. Yet Tathren was more than gold and glitter to Echoriath – his recent, quick-witted defense proof enough of this – he was shelter, giving, and graciousness personified.

Tathren’s friendship had often been his only true sanctuary; else he would not have missed him so. 

As if to underline Echoriath’s unspoken appraisal, Tathren murmured: “Your think on your Naneth, Echo, do you not? She is remembered to you by the sea, if I recall.” 

“Aye,” he hushly replied, though in truth his mind, awash with Tathren’s scent, had set his remembrances aside. “I wish… I wish I could…” 

Tathren nodded almost imperceptibly. “I, too, often wish to take counsel with my Naneth. Though it must be more painful knowing that she… that she is but an ocean away.” 

At this brazing revelation, and the memory of Neyanna’s sorrowful passing, Echoriath forgot his own needful preoccupations, indeed his own bashfulness entirely, and instinctively hugged Tathren close. 

“She sails on the Foam-Flower above us, tathrelasse,” he whispered to him. Tathren, startled by this gesture, enclosed his softhearted cousin in his arms and chuckled softly. He struggled, nevertheless, to avoid too poignant thought of his mother. “She glows in the very light of the silmaril itself.” 

“Ah, my dearest Echo,” Tathren sighed with affection. “You are of rare heart indeed, gwador.” 

*

Later, as Cuthalion sharpened his hunting knife by the fire and Echoriath sketched on the faraway rock shelf, Tathren was again impressed by the ampleness of his timid cousin’s heart, when he surveyed their tidy camp. Sometime in the brief minutes between their arrival and their swim, the tent had been erected, the girders reinforced, their packs stowed safely away, the horses unburdened of their saddles, and the wood collected. Tathren did not even recall Cuthalion lighting the hearth before which he sat, nor either of them fetching the logs that surrounded. With typically unseen efficiency, Echoriath had readied them for the coming dusk, his doting care easily overlooked by the untrained eye. 

His cousin was, he mused, an unheralded marvel. 

“Talion,” he beckoned the silver elf, as he searched the area for his too-well-hidden pack. “Have you thought on what to gift Echoriath for your coming majority?” The young builder, being so skilled and so shy, was notoriously difficult to decently please. 

“I have thought on little else since the presentation of our apartments!!” Cuthalion exclaimed, his befuddlement plain. “What could I possibly gift him to equal such… such craftsmanship, such artful efforts… I am nearly bereft at the thought of displeasing him, gwador.” To be fair, Cuthalion did not appear particularly bereft, though he was clearly troubled some. 

“Aye, I am similarly besot,” Tathren agreed. “Though I thankfully do not bear the burden of matching those talans for splendor.” 

“Lucky,” Cuthalion groused, then pondered the matter further. “I *had* harkened on a… a certain idea… but, as evidenced this very afternoon, I lack the delicacy of manner to successfully… but, then, I wonder if there *is* one of such delicacy…” 

Bemused by his cousin’s meandering mind, he questioned: “What madness is this you speak of?” 

Cuthalion smirked, then explained: “Perhaps it is madness indeed. My Adar are… they have become concerned that Echoriath will never find his heart’s mate, being so solitary. They have counseled him, encouraged him, to take rites upon our coming majority. I thought perhaps to aid in the accomplishment of this, but in all honesty, I know not how to begin. He is so… so lonely, Tathren. He has been so long alone, he does not even mark his own loneliness!!”

“He is solitary by nature,” Tathren remarked, almost redundantly. “He seeks out isolation time and again, he fights our attempts to bring him out of his shell… He adores his work. He would not feel whole without his plants, his designs… This is the matter of which he is so preciously made. He would not be our Echoriath otherwise.” 

“But life is not work,” Cuthalion countered. “I agree that his future mate need enjoy some of the tasks that obsess him to be well matched, but how is he to find such a one if he frequents the company of trees?” The silver-hewn elf harrumphed in frustration, whishing he was more eloquent. “You know his heart better than most, Tathren, even I his twin do not share such an affinity with him. I have, nor seek, no quarrel with this. But I *am* his brother and… you have been adventuring for some time. There is, of late, a darkness that shades his spirit. A longing… Think on it awhile, he would not be so adamant about this suggestion of our Adar if the matter did not strike him deeply. How could he not long for another’s touch? He will soon be of his second majority and has never known the pleasure of a bed-partner, the warmth of waking next to an admirer and the pleasure of loving with another being. He wakes every morning in the very spot where the night before he exhaustedly fell. His chores are so numerous that there is not a moment of the day that does not occupy him, not a sliver of space for his mind to wander in. He is beholden to a dozen others’ cares, but who cares for him above all others? He takes little nourishment, less sleep, and speaks to no one of any thing!! I was unmannered in my approach earlier… but I was not mistaken.” This last was whispered bitterly, as if to utter the words would give them a desperate credence. 

Tathren absorbed these worrisome details with deceptive calm. His indigo eyes drifted over to the rocks, where Echoriath sat in rapt contemplation of some sea creature in the wading pool on the shelf, or so it seemed. He had not, however, failed to mark his cousin’s bashfulness when he had shed his raiment, nor his disease when he had undone his hair. Echoriath had never been so skittish in his presence, never so evasive. He could not deny the merit of Cuthalion’s observations. To never in all his years have known another’s touch… Tathren could not imagine how one of Echoriath’s self-effacing disposition might interpret this regretful circumstance, nor how deep he might burrow to avoid its confrontation. 

An idea, like a bud in springtime, bloomed in his mind. 

“I will remain here,” Tathren informed him, leaving no room for debate. 

“We must act in secret,” Cuthalion insisted. “There’s no reasoning with him.” 

“I seek not to *reason* with him, as you say,” Tathren retorted, but with benevolence. “Merely to become… reacquainted.” 

With a roll of his eyes, Cuthalion sighed. “Very well. But do not cry to me when you are bitten.” 

“Take care with the boars,” Tathren advised him, but would not say more. “They are wily, and run wild.” 

“I might similarly advise you, gwador,” Cuthalion grumbled, before rising. “I will not tarry long.” 

With a sober nod, he ambled off into the nearby woods. A cautious eye to the horizon, Tathren stood resolutely, then casually made his way over to the rock shelf.

*

Though Arien had long skirted away behind the mist-veiled mountain peaks, her amber hued aura still melded with the roseate tones of the setting sky. Violet-rimmed clouds streaked the horizon with the colors of descending twilight, but their vaporous bellies fumed orange and red as hearth embers. Though still as a crane over a fishing pool, Echoriath’s pencil scuttled over his page, anxious to note the last vital details of his subject in the sunset’s dimming light. The subject in question was a peach-pink anemone, flower of the sea, whose fleshy petals billowed even in the stagnant water of the rock pore. True to form, Echoriath had not drawn the flower itself, but studied the plant’s more becoming traits and designed a fountain in its image, perfect for the suspended garden of his future apartments.

When he spied the sketch for such a genial, gorgeous innovation, Tathren could not but shake his head in wonder. There was no cork nor dam, he esteemed, to ebb the flow of the young builder’s incredible imagination. He did not announce himself, but perched on the rocks close behind, better to observe his hush cousin. He did not doubt Echoriath had marked him; he simply would not allow even Tathren to interrupt his task before proper completion. Though his drawing seemed complete to the untrained eye, he was sure Echoriath would vehemently dispute this, pointing out a dozen of the anemone’s traits he had yet to decently capture. 

In these moments, the darkling elf could naught but mesmerize him. If one bothered to inquire after a cherished subject, Echoriath was more than happy, in his own humble manner, to detail the more fascinating aspects of the enterprise, practice, or creature at hand, even the most innocuous or mundane facet was enlivened by the remarkable breadth of his knowledge. If he ever applied himself, he could become quite the storyteller; even his low-pitched voice could serve to further captivate his audience. In the earlier years of their time in Arda, before the social world had truly scarred him, he seemed equally starved of and famished for information; a quick explanation was never enough to suit the relentless elfling, who would tug, pummel, and even bite if his quest for intellectual satisfaction was ignored (Cuthalion had not wrongly painted him so vicious, as he had more than once, in boredom, been the fodder for his brother’s unforgiving incisors). Gimli’s incontinent instruction had tempered him some and Erestor’s wisdom had enthralled him for hours, but Ithilien’s unruly frontier had cowered him. Unlike the for-a-time rejuvenated people of Imladris, there were no other elflings in Ada-Las’ colony to engage him, the Sindar only second to the grumpy subjects of Gondor in their dislike, if not outright reproach, for a strange, fraternal peredhil twin of noble descent yet dubious begetting. 

Little wonder Echoriath might feel misunderstood, or, more poignantly, lonely. 

Tathren had been foolish to so long abandon his cousin, and at such a tender age.

As the last shimmer of sunlight lit the sterling sea and reflected back to the shore, Tathren took an honest measure of the darkling elf’s countenance. He found there, to his slight shock, an immeasurable comeliness. When he looked on him as a suitor might, he could not help but be struck by the crystalline radiance of his white skin, the thick, sensuous sheathes of his ebony hair, his soft features and his voluptuous lips. How ripe was his plump pout, how sumptuous to suckle such a curve between his own…

Tathren jolted back to the present, shamed by his brazenness. Yet he could not deny that his body was stirred, that the first tingles of desire unsteadied him, that in this weird, breathless moment, he saw his cousin with new eyes… 

…such eyes the darkling elf had, most often of burnished gold or mellow amber, but they could flame, effulgent with inspiration, or shine like a cave of dragon’s treasure, or flicker with a wolf’s unyielding will. They never blackened, as even Ada-Las’ glacial pools did on occasion, but merely glowed, silently yearning, when hurt, or weary, or sorrowed. They were unique to both Arda and Aman, their genesis unknown, though Tathren favored, as did their fathers, the idea that Elladan’s love for Glorfindel was of such a force in their begetting that his ardor turned their child’s eyes gold in tribute. 

Tathren swallowed hard, his disquiet mounting as fitfully as his bubbling blood. Had he always thought Echoriath so fair, so…? He dared not even allow the notion to pass unfiltered through his lightened head, lest he do something rash. He was unaccustomed, in matters of such heat, to being denied the object of his interest, though in this case caution and temperance were the better side of valor. He had not indulged in the more giving arts for nearly a decade’s time, this distraction was no doubt his body’s way of informing him that satisfaction had waited a year or two too long. Besides, he had thought to position his cousin for an introduction to one of his explorer friends, a softhearted elf with whom he might come to pass a scarlet evening or two. Best to stay the course, and leave the examining of his own unchecked desires for a more private moment. 

The evening light having grown too faint for even such unparalleled elf eyes, Echoriath set aside his sketch pad and stilled in the gloaming. Tathren, in turn, watched as the last streaks of orange were snuffed out by the blue twilight, until even Echoriath’s luminous skin turned silver in the darkness. 

“You have grown restless this last week,” Echoriath confronted him, his voice clear and crisp in the cool night air. “Will you so soon forsake us for adventure?” 

“Nay, gwador, fear not,” Tathren promised him. “I am sworn to Telperion for another half-decade, by my Adar’s charge. I would not dishearten them by such a brief stay home.” After some consideration, he added. “Do you feel I forsake you, when I go?” 

“Twas a manner of speaking,” Echoriath apologized quickly. “I thought but to taunt you some.” 

“It seems I was missed,” Tathren countered in jest, though he was suddenly assaulted by eyes of the anemone’s preternatural phosphorescence. 

“So terribly missed,” the darkling elf confessed to him, then tore his glowing eyes away. Pricked by his candor, Tathren moved to his cousin’s side. Before he could settle, his hand was snatched away, soon tightly berthed in the calloused, though lissome, clasp of the young builder. “Though you might uncover a new member of your exploring party, ere you depart again.” 

“You would join us?” Tathren started. There was truly no end of surprises in his cousin’s unpredictable nature. “But…”

“If I am to build the cities of my dreams,” Echoriath explained. “I must win the High Council’s favor. If only I can conquer certain… tendencies, in my nature, I know I might be chosen for a commission. The population of Valinor grows yearly, but there are not enough sanctuaries. I could… I could help…” 

“The apartments are your overture,” Tathren guessed, resulting in a furious nod. 

“They are an achievement, of sorts,” Echoriath agreed. “But they are here, where I have built before. I must prove to the Council I can journey at their will. I long to test my mind on… on unblemished land. A new site, with different resources, the chance to plan great halls, courtyards, gardens, wells, bridges…” The darkling elf was so enamored of this vision, he veritably quaked with feeling. 

“I will aid you in any way I might, gwador,” Tathren vowed, with lush fondness. “You must train yourself for such a journey. I would gladly play tutor, if you would have me.” 

“Truly?” Echoriath blinked, blushing fiercely, as was his wont when another showed even the most tenuous regard. 

“Most certainly,” Tathren insisted. “I’ve even your first lesson in mind.” 

“Oh, aye,” Echoriath nodded eagerly, always one to cotton to discipline. 

“A celebration is to be held in two eve’s time,” Tathren carefully told him. “In honor of the exploring party’s return. Every member of the company will be there, you’ll not find them merrier nor more generously minded than in the ale hall that night. You must come make their acquaintance.” 

Echoriath gasped at the suggestion, his face turned ashen, his eyes so winsome, so horrified, that Tathren almost backed down. Almost. Knowing too acutely how he would be dishonored by refusing this first, vital lesson, especially under Tathren’s charge, Echoriath swallowed back his bleating and blinked away his budding tears. 

“I-If you w-would accompany me, gwador,” his voice quavered even as he answered him. “I would be most… most honored t-to attend.” The resulting smile that alighted Tathren’s beaming features was enough to hearten his resolve. 

“I would be most honored to accompany you, Echo,” Tathren replied, his voice similarly hushed. Before the young builder could take back his vow, the peredhil sprung to his feet. He offered his cousin his steadying arm for their return. “Come, my brave one. I can smell the roasting boar.” 

As he folded the darkling elf against him, Tathren wondered at what had truly passed between them here. 

* * *

Elrohir smoothed himself over the buttery skin of the archer prone before him with the ease of a churn through cream. Luminous Ithil beamed over their quiescent bedchamber through the skylight above, her chill gossamer rays bestowing even the lurking ombre with a preternatural sheen. Legolas was radiant in the moonlight, in his throes; his white-gold hair spread like a tulle girdle across the pillow, his sweat-slick skin sparkled as if dusted with diamonds, and his glass-cut eyes encased a fearsome phosphorescence. 

He was ethereal, star-kissed and sultry all at once. Elrohir could do naught but sink further into him, shattering this porcelain midnight’s spell. 

The golden elf’s deceptively limber thighs locked around him, holding him in the quick. He mated their wanting eyes and cupped his darkling husband’s face, whispering such troths of love that Elrohir was soon flaming as pyre, his head light and musty as smoke, his skin-pelt scorching, and his molten loins precipitously close to implosion. He took Legolas’ mouth to consume his hot words, drawing long and full of his lusciousness then laving the length of that tender tongue, nearly sucking him dry in his ardor. Elrohir could no longer bear the sharp bolts of pleasure singing his hips, up his clenched abdomen. The blunt of Legolas’ tight-wrought erection prodded against him as the archer thrashed and writhed beneath him, then, after a keening howl, suddenly erupted. He forced his own retreat from the now-boneless legs around him, then thrust hard, constant, desperate, though by this time Legolas was so seed-soaked and giving, there was naught but the most decadent, sensuous friction between them. He spent quickly, unctuously into his mate’s deepest core, as flare after flare of ecstasy engulfed him. 

“O my one,” he rasped, as rapture besotted him. He quite readily collapsed into the fugue-headed aftermath, onto Legolas’ baking chest. “My beauteous one.” 

Only when he recovered himself enough to grapple for another kiss did he mark Legolas’ weeping. 

Elrohir breathed deep, steadied his foggy head, the air still ripe with the feral scent of their coupling. Too distracting, as was Legolas’ faint musk when he nuzzled his neck. The archer grunted, too proud for sympathy, but Elrohir wove his gentle, soothing way around his tense frame and into his graces. He was, however, rather concerned. Legolas had not so wept since the War, not since that telltale night at the Hornburg when first he was told of Tathren’s culling song. Elrohir could not imagine what so troubled his husband in these dulcet times that he would be so sorrowed. 

Their day had passed as ever; Elrohir tending the sick in the Healing Halls and Legolas teaching his elfling charges of a bowsman’s agility. The evening meal had been ever mirthful, though quiet with the children gone; Legolas signaling his desire to be had by winks, smiles, and touches, as was his way. They had an easy stroll among the willows before retiring, the golden elf allowing himself to be wooed by his longtime husband, stoking their commingling soul flames with clutches, pinches, and outright gropes. By the time they had broached their bedchamber, Elrohir had teased off the lion’s share of the archer’s garments; Legolas, panting and suitably wilded, had been breathless with need. 

For certes there was coercion, seduction involved, it was the manner in which they always lured one another to bed. 

Legolas cleared his throat. He had calmed some during Elrohir’s speculative inner musings, though the elf-knight sensed he was glad enough of the warm arms that embraced him. Elrohir brushed his damp brow free of sticky gold tendrils of hair, met his muted cobalt eyes with unblemished regard. Legolas smirked, bemused even at his own overwhelming, and, to his husband’s continued surprise, blushed some. 

“You powers are fearsome, meleth,” he commented wryly. “Even after five hundred years, I am but a child in the thunder’s wake.” 

“Ah, but your charms are equally meritorious, maltaren-nin,” Elrohir complimented. “Were I not so deftly embroiled, you would not have been so sundered. Though I hope you found some pleasure, still.” 

“Too ample pleasure,” Legolas upbraided himself. “If such a thing can be said of your bed, melethron.” 

“There is no shame in weeping, nin ind,” Elrohir murmured into his flaxen crown, as Legolas fell disquietingly silent. 

A longly hour was passed so entwined, so soundless, as Elrohir coddled his brittle husband and Legolas gave in to his ever-constant tenderness. Sleep, however, eluded them. Legolas, tempered, snuck into a more symmetrical alignment with his beloved, better to meet his soft argent eyes while unburdening himself. Yet he kept his elf-knight gathered close, cocooned like to dormant butterflies amidst the satin sheets. 

“When we were shooting, the other morn,” Legolas began. “Tathren asked of me a… a rather keen question.” Elrohir raised an eyebrow, wondering why a query of their son’s had so interrupted their bed-play. “He expressed… I was quite shocked, in truth, at his acuity.” 

“He has not spoken of any trouble with me,” Elrohir mentioned. 

“Nay, he is himself quite content,” Legolas dismissed. “He is concerned… for us.” 

“For us?” Elrohir almost laughed, though touched by his son’s care. “What mischief is this, meleth?” 

“He…” Legolas sighed. 

He was no diplomat, nor orator of any skill. In times before, Elrohir had always guessed at the cause of his preoccupations and subsequently confronted him, but in days past he had made no mention of Legolas’ more frequent bouts of introspection, though they had been numerous and plaguing. He had wondered, that very afternoon, if Elrohir had indeed intuited the matter of his inner quarrels and had judged the subject too sensitive to intrude upon; though by the current, amused tenor of his noble countenance, he dismissed this supposition.

“Legolas,” Elrohir beckoned his attention, as he ghosted his knuckles down his cheek. “What could Tathren have asked to trouble you so?” 

“He wondered why we had never…” he scowled, angered at his own reluctance, then pressed on. “Why we had never begot another child.” Elrohir’s eyes widened, though his lips remained pliant. “Though I well-know the rote of our reasons and have never truly missed this phantom other, I find myself, since his innocent query, unable to properly dismiss the notion. His opinion was quite… quite compelling. All week I have been caught by this too-enticing mirage, a little ellyth or ellon born and reared in peace, blessed with our care without the distractions of war, wardship, or elfkind’s passing on. A child grown in the full bloom of our love.” 

Elrohir sighed, lowered his pensive eyes. The scene his lover painted before him was of luring sweetness; he had often, if he was honest, sketched himself a similarly rosy rendering. Yet the elf-knight well-knew Legolas had not forgotten the darker shades of this vision, the looming shadow of the manner of this potential child’s begetting. For this, on this night, Legolas had given himself to him, for this he had wept in his arms. His golden husband had not, in the hundred years passed and in the light of Elrohir’s immediate forgiveness, truly absolved himself of his accidental transgression. Even with his husband’s permission, the archer would never himself repent of this second action against him. 

“Ah, my brave one,” Elrohir mused, but kissed him for his courage. “You are a rare jewel for so gallantly battling your own woes in the name of our purest joy. But you could not suffer another begetting, especially without some black conjuring, and nevertheless, I would not allow it.”

“Nay, I know it, meleth,” Legolas underlined, but this proved little assurance when he subsequently made himself too, too plain. “*I* could not beget another. But…” 

Elrohir blanched. He fought the urge to pull away, as Legolas was already beset by their fractious debate, though his skin crawled with revulsion at the very voicing, or insinuation, of such a notion. 

“*Legolas*,” he rasped, swallowing back the bile that braised his throat. “I have not lain with another since… since before your own begetting.” 

Legolas gasped, gaped, but did not comment for some time. “But Elladan-”

“Nor am I of mettle so fierce and passionate as my fevered brother,” he countered before the argument was made. 

“Nay,” Legolas retorted, but looked wounded. “You are of subtler grace and of different molding, but you are his match in valor and double his might in passion.” 

“Even if I was myself resolved,” Elrohir pursued, undaunted by his seeming hurt. “Could you bear my… my infidelity, Legolas? Could you pass a night gripped in the agony of knowing that I was taking another in the manner-“ The elf-knight broke off, struck by true, merciless understanding. 

A test. This night, their smoldering coupling, his weeping in its wake… it had been a test, or sorts, for Legolas’ own resolve. A reminder of Elrohir’s amply generous bedding skills – since Legolas more oft than not did the taking between them – of just what manner of pleasure and loving he need sacrifice for their second child’s begetting. Though sorrow had riled him, it had not ravaged; he had born it as a warrior might, then dared press the burning question to his heart’s mate.

He was decided, then. 

“Might I reflect awhile, on this?” Elrohir requested softly, rather awed by severity of Legolas’ measures. He had, if nothing else, thoroughly proved himself. “I would take counsel with Elladan, perhaps with Ada…” 

“Well reasoned, melethron,” Legolas smiled faintly, tightening his hold to impress upon his husband his undaunted affection. “I, too, would privately speak with Glorfindel. His insight will be most keen.” 

“Indeed,” Elrohir muttered, his thoughts too readily engaged by the notion of another child. A babe of his seed, of his siring, to which he would be bound as no other. 

After some digestion, the idea was rather intriguing. 

Legolas, for his part, was relieved. Let his husband stew awhile, he chuckled to himself, as he burrowed his face into Elrohir’s clammy neck. He had thought to finally find welcome sleep, but his body soon betrayed him. His prickling skin was not, apparently, satisfied by the elf-knight’s vigorous ministrations, nor his quick-swelling shaft by the paltry friction of firm abdominals. Curious fingers found out the shaggy nipple of the peredhil hugged to him, their tips fluttery, teasing. Lolling his head back to allow his nape to be deliciously purpled, Elrohir seemed to have no objection to Legolas spreading himself over him, nor to the stirring of his own perilously needful engorgement. 

He gladly indulged in what would be forever his alone, his Legolas’ peerless loving. 

* * * 

Perched on the bottom step of the mithril-hewn staircase, which slithered up the ageless trunk of the mallorn in which Elladan and Glorfindel’s family made their home, Tathren was composed as the most veteran consort. He tapped the heel of his boot to the cricket trills, certainly not in impatience. With excitement, and not a wit of anxiousness, did he twist an overlong lace of his breeches around his bow-stringing index. He whistled a sharp-noted tune in reverence of Ithil, floating like a glow-lamp over the quiescent forest, not at all to allay the swarm of feeflies that wrought a hive in his innards. When two shroud figures slid lively down the highest steps, he sprang to his feet, not out of anticipation, but to avoid distressing their descent. 

No amount of barely-stayed poise could have prepared him, however, for the shock of Echoriath’s transformation. 

At past formal gatherings, he had always been ably but soberly groomed. This night, he was garnished to luscious perfection; not garishly overdone, but throat-parching in his subtle grace. His usual selection of somber, monochromatic raiment had not been countermanded, but cut to enhance his sleek frame. His simple black shirt was open-collared, its material light as ebony gauze. His breeches were of form-fitting velour, enhancing every curve of his muscle-strung thighs and calves. His boots, black with silver fletches, were fleeter than the brown builder slabs he favored for work, but the most becoming piece was his knee-length, fitted jacket, of a gray-tinged lavender not unbecoming an ellon. Of a coarser cloth than the silk preferred by the ellyth of Telperion, under the moon’s gossamer rays the ethereal garment seemed to seamlessly blend in with Echoriath’s pearlescent skin, just as the velvet texture of hair was mirrored in his darker clothes. When their eyes locked in silent greeting, those amber pools cooled to liquid copper in the blue light, Tathren felt he but then firstly met this lush, ravishing elf.

“Is he not splendid?” Cuthalion heralded, from behind. “What you see before you is the work of a dozen elves, over two days of nagging and pleading. I verily had to wrestle him into the breeches, only Elbereth’s will kept them from being torn. If our grandmother had not fashioned the jacket herself as recompense for his orchid-vigil, he would be cloaked black was a wraith.” 

“*Saes*, gwanur,” Echoriath sighed, but could not truly upbraid him. 

Copper eyes sought sanctuary in the dewy grass, this comely vision instantly recognized by his telltale timidity. Tathren smirked, but held his heavied tongue lest he be too fallacious in his praise. Instead, he offered his arm, as promised. Echoriath clasped eager hold; his proud escort instantly perceiving the rigidity that wrecked his lithe frame. Despite the resplendent night and the mercurial company, this brittle tension did not abate during their walk to the ale hall, but mounted such that Tathren feared, as they breached the entranceway, that his cousin’s very bones might snap. 

Indeed, but ten strides into the hall, Echoriath stopped cold, his pull like a lead shackle to the wrist. Cuthalion, in true form, had already blazed past them, hasty to make his presence known on the edge of the busy dancefloor. Tathren, with a hidden scowl, turned back to his now-trembling cousin; he quickly anchored an arm around him to stave off any notion of retreat. He didn’t doubt his arm was purpling under Echoriath’s crushing grip, though he would gladly bear even the most goring bruise to get the young builder to the nearby table of his comrades. 

“A moment,” Echoriath rasped, his low voice shred raw and his golden eyes round as the fatted moon. Tathren realized that, despite the severity of his reaction, his cousin had no intention of retreating. He merely wished to acclimate himself to such an unfamiliar environment, before beginning to explore its foreign landscape. “I-Is there mead? I would not care for ale.” 

“There is ample mead,” Tathren assured him. 

“Must I… am I required to…dance?” he inquired, his face sallow with dread. 

“Nay, gwador,” Tathren instructed, moving to his side so as to allow him better view of the vivacious hall. “I, myself, am rarely lured away from my comrades, unless by a particularly worthy...” Something in his cousin’s eyes made him abandon his thought. “Be gracious, but firm in your refusals, so none will think you haughty.” Echoriath nodded almost imperceptibly and took an encouraging step forward. His eyes alighted on their designated table; his keen builder’s eyes taking measure of these potential comrades. 

Among the five gathered explorers was Thorontir, a hearty elf of flaxen hair and Silvan heritage, who held court, as was his wont, boasting of their adventures to those that had lived them. Cirhith and Rohros, twins born of Lothlorien, were of stately chestnut hue and accompanied by their giddy sweethearts. Glinfalas, lean as a slit knife and of spiky disposition, loomed in the far corner, ever-silent. Having left his own seat, a kind-faced, ruddy elf of irreconcilable heritage sauntered towards them. His strawberry-blonde locks and piercing green eyes rendered him almost too pretty for words, if not for the feral timbre that underlay his every move. 

Echoriath was visibly taken with his unusual, almost mannish looks, strongly reminiscent of the fair spearmen of Rohan, though only a familiar would have noted such by his skittish regard. Tathren did so, and felt a knot cinch within him. He swallowed, once, to clear his palate, then opened to his approaching friend. 

“Well met, shieldbrother,” the spry elf greeted him, with a grin wide as the Hornburg gulch.

“Indeed, Elostrion,” Tathren seconded, as they embraced in the usual manner. “May I present my cousin Echoriath, Prince of Imladris and, if the Council would ever be decided, perhaps of Telperion wood itself.” 

“Lord Elladan is your sire, is he not?” Elostrion inquired, with such gentility that Echoriath knew he had been forewarned of his shyness. “He was my swordmaster and mentor, long ago.” 

“W-was he?” Echoriath murmured, finding some ease in the ellon’s light manner. “You must have been skillful, to have so caught my father’s eye.” 

“It was I, rather, than begged his teaching,” Elostrion humbly dismissed the compliment, but Tathren would not let him be so daunted.

“Elostrion hails from both Lorien and Rohan,” Tathren explained. “He, too, is peredhil; his mother is Dorian. His father is rumored to have been one of Theoden’s own forebears, though he keeps his mysteries like his stealth.”

“And how is that I keep them?” Elostrion laughed. 

“Why, hidden under a veil of beatific blondeness, meldir,” Tathren further taunted him, as they drifted over to the table. 

Before Echoriath could bother to object, they plunked him down on a stool, and followed suit, flanking him. Their bickering ceased as the ale began to flow. A cup of mead was soon foist into his unwitting grasp, while Tathren’s consoling touch repeatedly smoothed the length of his back. Indeed, the darkling elf had not time enough to shiver, when he was seized by the hawkish eyes of smug Thorontir. 

“My brave ones, we are in rare company this eve,” he announced, to those who would bother listen. “The son of the mighty Balrog-slayer himself bequeaths us his company. What say you, Glorfindelion, of this fine gathering?” Tathren’s fingers gnarled around his cup, but Echoriath clamped a too-strong, though tempering, hand on his wrist. 

The entire table glared, their rapt eyes ready on him. 

“I am humbled in the presence of such accomplished elders,” Echoriath replied, so hushly that the others leaned forward to mark him. “Though I hope to one day match my Adar in valor, I am no warrior, but a simple tradesman and gardener.” This utterance so greatly impressed the company, that, to Echoriath’s horror, they waited on him further. “Forgive me… I… I am…” 

“He is no mere gardener,” Elostrion stepped up to champion him. “Have none of you had occasion to stroll through Lord Elladan’s orchards? This modest elf here is their sower, breeder, and caretaker. He also keeps Lady Celebrian’s gardens, as well as her collection of rare blooms. He even built the hothouse that protects them.” Echoriath struggled to keep his jaw shut, unaware that he had a reputation in any way, shape, or form. 

“Indeed, the High Council itself recently approved his most expert design to date,” Tathren added, relishing his chance to champion his cousin’s gifts. “Have you not seen the sketches displayed in the Hall of Fire? The apartments to be erected on the tall trees in the river glade?” 

A murmur of awe rustled through the assembled explorers as wind over a leaf-strewn path. Though he cowered further onto his stool, he found the curious gazes collected on him were nothing if not avid. Echoriath had not known that his grandsire had displayed the designs in the Hall of Fire. He was, to be honest, somewhat abashed by this revelation, but also allowed himself a tinge of pleasure. They had seen them. By their look, they admired them. 

From behind the coiled vise of the arms over his chest, withering Glinfalas himself asked: “How, pray tell, do you think you will bed a garden on a glass shelf in the high branches?” 

With genuine interest, Echoriath well-considered his reply. His voice, when unleashed upon them, was low-toned, yet of full tenor. “It is, as in all things, a matter of balance…” 

As the darkling elf went on to describe the finer points of his vision, Tathren’s swelling heart ripened as a midsummer peach. Though Echoriath was clearly riled by the relentless attention paid him, his ability to ignore his still quaking hands and bashfully endear himself to the company gave Tathren great hope for his future. Inwardly, he likened the sight to witnessing the birth of a favored horse’s foal, though he doubted any horse-breeder around wanted said foal’s obsidian hair splayed across his lap, wanted to tangle his fingers in the satiny locks and be sucked between sultry pink lips… 

He recoiled with a start from his too-heady imaginings. What madness was this that still perilously ensnared him? 

Tathren realized that the talk around him had shifted. Thorontir again held the greater company captive, while merry-eyed Elostrion had his cousin’s ear. True to form, his friend charted the conversation’s route, with Echoriath mumbling quick asides and nodding intently. Indeed, the two had cottoned to each other with the swiftness of hound-hunted hares. As their conversation carried seemingly forever on, Elostrion’s sage green eyes sparked with bold emerald, taking in with great interest and even greater flattery the rapt regard of this twilight child. Tathren could only watch, his stomach boiling like a cauldron, as his sworn shieldbrother further entranced him: a squeeze to his arm to underline a mirthful tale, their meeting glances over a point of mutual understanding, a warm hand lain on his leg to further entice him. Echoriath was too innocent, too goodhearted to see the spell he wove; Tathren would once have encouraged their courtship, but his friend’s blatant flirtations left him teeming with revulsion. 

Tathren did not know what had come over him. He ground his teeth into his tongue’s flesh until it bled down his throat, to stop the churlish growl that seethed behind. Elostrion had been his bunk-mate during their warrior trials, his ever-friend and near-brother, but at this moment Tathren could in a blind instant gouge out his eyes, lest their lecherous gaze linger another moment on the slender nape of Echoriath’s neck. He schooled himself for a time, taking a long draught of ale and averting his accusing eyes, but when Elostrion swept a stray lock of that sensuous raven hair behind the blushing elf’s peaked ear, his fists clenched such that he ripped a swatch from the tablecloth. He flamed with rage, with pure instinct, with he-knew-not-what-source’s fire, but was sentient enough to leap to his feet and stagger back from the bench, as if afflicted. 

Which he undoubtedly was, with some fearsome devilry. 

“I am poorly,” he excused himself, his cheeks bit they burned so. “I should retire…” Elostrion and Echoriath, needless to say, were instantly at his side. 

“I will escort you,” Echoriath reassured him, clasping his arm and ghosting strokes over its trembling length. 

“Nay, stay on, gwador,” Tathren urged him, though his stomach seized at the thought. “You cannot so casually leave your new friends.” 

“You are flush with fever, tathrelasse,” he insisted, moving closer to support his unsteady weight. With a nod to Elostrion, the darkling elf bought them some privacy. “I will take you to your bed.” He dared not add that he would inform his fathers of this sickness, as any such pronouncement would do his cause no help at all. 

Tathren did not want to contemplate what blasphemy might occur if Echoriath were to accompany him to bed. “Please, Echo, stay with your brother, with… the company. Be at ease. I will retire presently, and be whole and hale on the morrow.” 

“My *brother*,” he snorted balefully. “Has already retired with some, as you once so shrewdly noted, heavy-bosomed Sindar maid. I am properly acquainted, as you proposed, with the exploring party. And you, gwador, are growing more peaked by the instant. Now, come along…” 

Tathren would have been shocked by his willfulness, if he were not already besieged by some tempestuous tenor of… jealousy? *Could* he be jealous of Elostrion? There was little doubt, after his regretful behavior, that some unchecked desire for his sweet cousin had been allowed to fester within him for some time. 

His mind suddenly coursed with wilded reasoning; his beleaguered soul demanding, and receiving, belated recognition. Was this incipient attraction so wrongheaded? Could he not, if Echoriath was willing, be his bed-teacher? He shuddered at the thought of Echo spread across the sheets beneath him, bliss-drunk and hopelessly wanting. *Your cousin*, he remembered in time to shut away the too-lovely image. 

His mind raced on as fleetly as a wolf-stalked elk. Surely their fathers would not approve of such a choice, but who were their fathers to condemn them? If the purpose of their coupling was but majority rites, with Echoriath suitably introduced to the loving arts – this by the one he most trusted in Aman entire - and afterwards free to explore on his own, why need they involve *any* other in their decision? The delicacy was in securing Echoriath’s complicity, not to mention the subtle matter of the young builder’s desires perhaps not leaning in that direction… there were so many sides of the matter left to consider and his fuming head spun from its whirlwind deliberations.

Echoriath wove a solid arm around him, mooring him to the present. Tathren reeled from the swiftness with which he had jumped from some slight notion of jealousy to secretly claiming his cousin’s majority. 

Yet even with the faintest glimmer of hope that his strange desire might be sated, Tathren found his temper at last. As Echoriath led him through the silver-washed mallorn trunks towards his talan, he lay a groggy head on the darkling elf’s shoulder and surreptitiously drank in the heather-laced scent of that luxurious hair. 

If only the comely elf knew how his charms were coveted. 

 

End of Part Two


	3. Part 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After their sultry midsummer night’s dreams, Tathren and Echoriath awake to find the world has changed.

Part Three

As a sea-swollen midsummer breeze swept through the leaves around him, Echoriath flirted with wakefulness. The delicate scent of willow down tickled his senses, though his drowsy mind could not reason how such a blithe odor could waft so high above the upper boughs. With good-natured grumbling, he snuggled deeper into his bed only to find his cheek scratched by a coarse, uninviting surface. 

Bark. Curious. 

Slowly extricating himself from just beneath the surface of light slumber, Echoriath opened his eyes but a slit, only to be assaulted by the blast of Arien’s boldest rays. To his faint surprise, he was curled onto the widest bough of a middle-aged ederwood, not twenty paces from the one where Tathren’s talan was hung. Memory suddenly flooded his groggy mind: the ale hall revels, his cousin’s fit, their meandering return to his apartment, and his mule-headed insistence that Echoriath leave him at the door. Too worried by half to obey him, he’d instead kept vigilant watch from this accommodating perch well into the night, waiting on a yelp, a cry, or any sort of unseemly sound, until, he guessed, sleep had overtaken him. At present, his bleary eyes found the window of Tathren’s bedchamber, where the curtains billowed, but remained drawn. 

All was well, then. 

He’d best, Echoriath surreptitiously whispered to himself, return home, before his Adar sent out a search party. The thought that they would probably be only too pleased at his absence, coupled with the rather bountiful comforts of the tree, bade him cuddle further onto the branch and sigh blissfully, as the first tendrils of sleep reclaimed his lax form. 

The leaves above him rattled as if shook, but he ignored whatever groundling creatures scurried there. He was an elf, they would not bother with him. The fiendish creatures struck again, to the left, then close beneath, then high above. What lengths could these doe-eyed heathens leap in their ardor? The definite knock of a nut hitting the trunk over his head alerted him to real danger, as his own branch was repeatedly pelted with these deftly launched missiles, which splintered on impact and soon rained over him. 

“Echo!!” a too-familiar voice rasped harshly from below, attempting to avoid rousing Tathren. With an inward groan, Echoriath uncoiled himself, yawned generously, then scowled down at his too-spry brother. “And just when were you going to grace us with your presence, majesty? It is almost afternoon!!” 

Surprised, Echoriath looked up at the sun, just inches from the spire of the sky. His brother, to his great chagrin, appeared to be correct. His negligence had caused his vigil to be found out; it would now require explanation, not just to his too-cheery twin, but to his fathers. With a groan, Echoriath stretched himself along the bough, then resolved to face the day. He took care to embrace the tree with proper reverence for sheltering him; the resulting aura of contentment from the ederwood his one consolation, as he grappled down to the forest ground. 

“I should have known you were not closeted with the fair Elostrion,” Cuthalion reproached him, noting with satisfaction the blush that stained his cheeks. “Though in truth I did not think to find you here. Was Tathren so poorly yestereve?”

“Aye, he was strange, Talion,” Echoriath told him verily. “We must pass by the willow thicket, inform Ada-Hir and Ada-Las of his distress.” 

“He must have been weirded for you to so court his displeasure,” Cuthalion remarked, joining arms with his sleep-lithe twin. “He will anger at your care.” 

“Let him rage,” Echoriath dismissed him, still too tired to be provoked. He held no fear of Tathren’s ire. “Though let him also be well.” 

“It is a day of strange temperance, indeed,” the silvery elf commented, after a time. “For you to sleep so longly and Tathren to loose countenance at a gathering.” 

“I will not neglect my chores,” Echoriath promised, though Cuthalion had given no thought to this. “I will work into the night at the harvest.”

To his increased perturbation, his brother laughed outright. “You will not need keep long hours for this harvest, gwanur!! The orchard will be barren in a week, with such hale company as you keep.” 

“What company?” Echoriath grumbled, out of sorts. He had not yet shed his exhaustion and his brother would not relent his taunting. “What madness is this you speak of? Verily, Talion, you may in time incur my own ire if you do not stay your menacing tongue.” 

“Oh, testy!!” Cuthalion snorted gleefully. “Perhaps you did indeed pass a few scarlet hours with Elostrion? Though he looks mighty piqued, for one so recently tumbled.” 

At that, Echoriath wrenched himself away, hastening his pace and avoiding his brother’s twinkling eyes. “You are foul.”

“Aye, perchance,” Cuthalion giddily admitted, as he jogged up to his side. “But I am also, regretfully, the only one who has thought to forewarn you of the company of elves camped in our courtyard, waiting on your arrival.” 

Echoriath halted precipitously and gaped at him. “How…?” 

“They were bedazzled, it seems,” his proud-eyed brother elucidated. “By your conversation and the no doubt reluctantly offered evidence of your incredible skills, gwanur-nin. They seek, for the duration of their stay in Telperion, some gainful employment, in service of your vision.” 

“T-they… they seek…?” Echoriath forgot to digest the words, before he could spit them back at him. “My… *service*?” 

“Your mastery,” Cuthalion underlined. “My young master builder. Though I imagine their brawn would be better used in the harvest, for the time being, as naught will be construction-ready for a fortnight, at the least.”

Echoriath corralled his swiftly fleeing emotions with stunning speed. “And what do our Adar make of this… this company’s insistence?” 

“They are veritably saturated with pride,” Cuthalion beamed, pulling him close again. “As am I, brother dear, and hope to be counted among your skilled company.” His darkling twin met his eyes with such softness that he knew no force in Aman could keep them apart, in this and all things. “Though they bade me inform you that, as your forces are tripled and then tripled again, you will not be so forgivingly missed at our evening meal, nor spared their wrath after continued absence.” Echoriath sighed ruefully at this, though he could hardly begrudge them this too-loving concession. “Besides, as you will soon be journeying to lands afar, I think it best to appease them.” 

“I had not thought otherwise, gwanur,” Echoriath smiled, his usual bashful smile, though tinged with a newfound confidence. He squeezed his brother with unbridled affection, then urged them swiftly onward. 

His company awaited him. 

* * *

After blinking away the last shades of slumber, Tathren peered out, through his thick, gossamer curtains, into what he astonishingly perceived to be late afternoon. Over the distant tree-tops, Arien loomed baked and golden, preparing for her nightly bedding beneath the far horizon. He knew not by what black enchantment he had been allowed to sleep the day away, but even a night beleaguered by his fired soul’s musings could not have thusly afflicted him so. Though he had not given in to exhaustion, he estimated, until just after dawn, even in all his adventuring he had never so longly recovered, not even when touched by bog-fever. 

He tossed his curtains shut and growled, whether enraged by his oversleeping, his wastefulness, or the previous evening’s theatrics, he knew not. 

Taking measure of his talan with a shrewd eye, he noted several telltale inconsistencies. For sheets so tempestuously furrowed through a night’s furious reasoning, the corners were tucked in and folded at sharp angles. On his bed table waited a carafe and a poured glass of spring water, neither of which he routinely kept there. The clothes he’d so fitfully shed had been closeted away by carpet sprites, or some such fantastical creature, as he had no memory other than dropping them at his feet. Last, but most condemning, was the hollow tub awaiting both him and the frothy waters that were, no doubt, at this very minute being boiled by his worried fathers. 

“Ada!!” he called them in from the kitchens, praying inwardly that he had not, upon their discovery of him, been provoked by one of his lustier dreams of the night past. 

The night had seemed, at times, one long, lusty dream, but he nevertheless dismissed any hint of shame from his demeanor. 

In mere seconds, his Ada-Hir shuffled in, bearing a tray of tea cups and a steaming pot. Tathren inwardly berated himself for being so comforted by the sight, as Elrohir quickly deposed the tea setting and hastened to examine his son. His argent eyes glowed with caring, with deeply-held concern; Tathren could only guess how compelling Echoriath’s pleas had been over this trivial business. He reminded himself that he’d probably terrified the inexperienced elf, who knew little of the often sundering after-effects of revelry – not that such was the outright cause of his intemperance. He expected his fathers to be more learned in this regard, but Echoriath’s earnestness had probably worried them beyond reason. 

Yet another too-tender facet of his blithe cousin’s allure. 

“How do you fare, nin ind?” Elrohir inquired softly, feeling his brow for fever. “You seemed well enough, in slumber, but the young one was quite distressed by your behavior yestereve. What was the trouble?” 

“I… I cannot say,” he replied honestly. He did not, even after a night of agony, have the slightest notion of why such blistering jealousy had so precipitously overtaken him. “Truly, Ada, I have never experienced such… I know not even how to name it.” With his most youthful, beseeching regard, he further begged. “Please, Ada, I am well. I need not trouble grandsire with such –“

“Your grandsire is a healer of peerless arts,” Elrohir retorted, with a pointed brow. Tathren sighed mightily, then plunked down on the edge of the bed. There was no force in Arda or Aman that could best him, save an iron word from his beloved Ada-Hir. After handing him a cup of hot tea, his father took his place beside him. “But I, too, see no reason to worry him, unless of course the fever comes anew. Even I cannot keep you from him, then, if word reaches that his grandson’s sickly.” 

“Nor would you choose to now,” Tathren taunted him. “If not, I imagine, for Ada-Las’ assurances.” 

“Perhaps,” Elrohir chuckled, found out, but felt no shame. “Your Ada-Las has been known to hold great sway with me.” 

Tathren smiled fondly, heartened by his father’s rising color, by the ever-pull of his affection for his mate that, even in such an instance, led his thoughts astray. That his Adar loved so purely, so intensely after so long always kept a part of Tathren’s heart at peace. Whether he was journeying or in their home’s berth, he knew they would always have each other’s solace, each other’s care to keep them. He adored them with a recklessness that bordered on abandon, each of his own potential mates judged by the weighty scale of their love. They were, in this, the most sterling and the most exigent of examples to him. 

Yet their wily ways were unrepentantly willful. He glanced at the cup suspiciously, then proffered it to his Adar. 

“Test it, will you?” he requested with a child’s innocence, though Elrohir was no fool. 

“There is no draught, tathrelasse,” he swore. “Have you not slept longly enough?” 

“Well reasoned,” Tathren smirked, then sipped at the hot tea. Despite his protests, it was quite soothing. 

“You may be pleased to know that your efforts have not gone to naught,” Elrohir informed him, after he’d taken several good sips. “Your company encamped themselves on your cousin’s doorstep this very morn, begging employment. They are harvesting the orchards as we speak.”

“Are they?” Tathren beamed. “I will swiftly bathe and join them.” After one of his father’s ever-diplomatic, you-will-do-no-such-thing glares, he tempered. “Or, perhaps, on the morrow, after I have recouped some of my strength.” 

“Well reasoned,” Elrohir shot back, but indulged his paternal urgings and began to stroke the length of his golden hair. Tathren cottoned to the gesture as a horse’s snout to petting. “Talion was raising considerable ire from our young Echo with the naming of a certain Elostrion. Was he so taken with him?” 

Tathren stilled imperceptibly, forced himself to answer: “Aye, so it seems. They may, before long, begin courting, if Elostrion has his way.” 

“Is Echoriath not similarly attentive to him?” Elrohir asked. 

“I cannot say,” Tathren shrugged, with easy dissimulation. “One cannot truly ever say what tides move within my darkling cousin, how they may rise his moods or sway his heart.” 

Elrohir nodded sagely at this remark, fell to pondering the wonder that was his brother’s child. 

Tathren, however, turned his mind to subtler matters. His gentle Ada, focused as he was on Echoriath and Elostrion, might not guess the true subtext of a question that had knocked forcefully through Tathren’s near-bursting skull the night before. He stayed his tongue until Elrohir’s eyes had nearly glazed-over, then carefully introduced his subject. 

“Ada,” he inquired soberly. “May I ask an intimacy of you?” 

“Surely, ioneth,” Elrohir replied, surprised by his solemn countenance. 

“I know that it was by Thranduil’s order that you…” Tathren took a steadying breath, then soldiered on. “That you took rites with my other father, upon his first majority. Yet I know you well enough, Ada, to know that, had you not felt Ada-Las was suitably readied for such embroilment, nothing in Thranduil’s or any other force’s power would have compelled you to lie with him against your will. Against his will. May I ask… what was’t that convinced you he was ready for such a… a vital choice?” 

Elrohir examined his son for some time, no doubt attempting to discern the reason for such a complex and personal inquiry. When none was forthcoming, he looked within. 

“I courted him some, beforehand,” Elrohir explained quietly. “At first, I feared he was too green. He had never even been kissed! Nor felt drawn to any other elf, male or maid, but then there were naught but elders in Mirkwood at the time and his people were routinely besieged. I was gentle, at first, though I myself was terribly eager; I loved him at first glance of his half-grown self. At once, he was too glad to return my affections, and, after a time of tender play, I saw desire spark in him. In truth, if I had had means I would have delayed another month or two, but times were fraught and we were wanted in Lorien… I gave him the choice, told him directly of my intent and answered even the most intimate of his inquiries beforehand. This candor, I suppose, is what readied him… though I like to think it was my comeliness and sensual graces.”

“No doubt,” Tathren chuckled fondly, somewhat appeased by his honest answer. “I ask because… there is one, in my circle, who is heavily beset by their virginity, and I thought… I thought perhaps to…” 

“Is this one an elfling still?” Elrohir inquired hushly, almost fearful of the answer. 

“Nay, they are well passed their minority,” Tathren assured him. 

Elrohir turned this over some, then queried: “Would you offer the gesture out of love, or merely desire?” 

“In truth,” Tathren exhaled with some difficulty, his father striking to the core of the matter. “I know not.” 

“Delicate,” Elrohir concluded, after a time. “A moment of extreme delicacy, to be sure. If you offer yourself in love, but are not wholly convinced of it, the elf might suffer greatly for love of you, since you have been offered and thusly taken their body’s most precious gift. If you give yourself in lust alone, they may become enamored of you, or, worse, you of them, and they do not return this affection, so opened are they as a result of your coupling to… other attractions. You say you are dear friends, this may well sunder what friendship you bear one another… a delicate affair, indeed.” 

“Ada, you have hit the very crux of my confusion!!” Tathren exclaimed, beset by melancholy. 

“And, yet, I have no answer,” Elrohir apologized to him. “But this… you are, without doubt and though I am horribly predisposed to your beauteous nature, one of the most tender, kindhearted, and giving elves in my acquaintance. I have no fear that, if you hold both their heart and your own with the most tenacious care, you will greatly gift this young elf by your regard and affections. Put the choice to them, ioneth, have faith in them. Only once given can trust be wholeheartedly returned.” 

Tathren let his father’s words slowly seep in, both their wisdom and their warning. He set the tea cup aside, and embraced him ardently. 

“Well reasoned, Ada,” he noted, with a sigh. 

* * *

From the outskirts of the resplendent orchard to the west of their talan, the much hallowed Balrog-slayer of Gondolin basked in the bucolic scene before him. Amid the dense foliage of expertly tended trees hung summer-fatted fruit; elegant pears, blushing peaches, and lusty plums, each juice-swollen sphere a tribute to the doting nurture of his son’s evergreen thumbs. The former guard-captain also noted how the affinity of touch required to harvest this ripe crop would finesse the brawny explorers’ knife-play. This merry bunch was scattered across the orchard, teetering atop ladders, portaging full baskets to the wheelbarrow, and generally taunting each other with the scathing affections of swordbrothers. 

Though he was not yet in sights of their mocking, his workers time and again looked to Echoriath for guidance, instruction, or simply information. When their young master spoke, only the leaves dared to rustle and sway, though Glorfindel had come to believe even these elements hushed in deference to him. He knew not whether his father’s pride puffed at his son’s burgeoning leadership or at the adventurers’ valorous obedience of him, as he had himself trained many among the company and had, before Echoriath’s birth, somewhat regarded them as both his soldiers and his children. 

He only knew his heart was as glutted as a calf at his mother’s teat. 

“Our milliard paternal labors have at last come to fruition, gwador,” Legolas remarked in greeting, as he stepped into line with his bond-brother. “How fare you on this remarkably fine day?” 

“Well met, Legolas,” Glorfindel smiled in response. “By troth, my dreaming mind could not have conjured such a hopeful scene in a thousand nights’ somnolence.” The archer laughed wryly, though inwardly agreed when he fell to contemplation of the jovial industry before him. “That my timid one is captain of such an esteemed company alone would appease a father’s worrisome nature, but to see him so well regarded among them by the grace of his ample gifts is near miraculous. And that his brother and cousin join ranks without dissention or jealousy…”

“Aye, I too am gladdened,” Legolas acknowledged. “Perhaps some long hours in nature’s cradle will keep my son closer to our own. Elrohir and I are grateful to Echoriath for showing these willful adventurers the quiet pleasures of home.” 

Glorfindel nodded sagely, though would not let this shadow cover his triumphant mood. “Elrohir dearly wanted for him, these last years.” 

“My husband may be more suited to the sharing of his innermost thoughts,” Legolas murmured, almost to himself. “But I suffer well as he, in solitude.” 

One glance at his pensive countenance told Glorfindel some trouble was afoot. The glorious day strangely burnished Legolas’ preternatural radiance, while such lazy midsummer afternoons usually imbued the archer with a shine of unequivocal splendor. His oft mercurial eyes were serene as the still ponds of Fangorn, their humors murky, reflecting some beleaguering preoccupation. He and Elrohir were lively enough at dinner the night before, their relentless affections engaging and spirited as always. Yet, on this watershed afternoon for both their children, Legolas had turned almost melancholy. 

“None among our kin doubt it, mellon-nin,” he shot in the dark. “One has but to linger a moment in company of you and your child to know your harrowing affection for him, and his unblemished regard of your gallant self.” Legolas smirked at this characterization, but nothing more. “Come now, gwador, I am unused to such sobriety. What trouble so afflicts you?” 

“Not trouble,” Legolas answered cryptically. “But… a struggle within.” His eyes, keen as arrowheads, examined his bond-brother’s stately visage, but found there only care. “I have, of late, wished for another child.” 

Glorfindel nodded sympathetically, then sighed. His experience of the decision that now blighted Legolas’ mirth had been prolonged and agonizing, little wonder his flaxen friend’s spitfire was so mellowed by his inner musings. He was grateful that their one attempt at progeny had wrought two such peerless sons, thus permanently and sufficiently quenching his tormenting thirst for parenthood. Legolas, however, had never before longed for children; the manner of his son’s begetting was if naught else an extreme deterrent against further action. None doubted that Tathren was fervently beloved by both his fathers, yet only one between them had wanted such a birth before it was foist upon them, only one would have chosen such a path. Until, apparently, with the advent of peacetime, an accidental father found himself too-well liking of the task. 

“You would take my counsel in this?” Glorfindel asked, knowing the answer before it was uttered. 

“If your grace would be so burdened,” Legolas grinned softly, himself flirting with mockery. 

“It well would, if only to champion your cause with Elrohir,” Glorfindel assured him. “I assume he yet opposes your will in this. And justly so, as he would, by my mark, be the chosen sire.”

“He would,” Legolas informed him, waiting on further remarks. 

With heavy heart, Glorfindel allowed the maligned memories to overtake him, spoiling, for a moment, their blithe afternoon. He constructed the telling of his anecdotes with care, considerate of both his audience and his desire that this proposed child come into being. He knew that, once begot, Legolas and Elrohir would easily repress any lingering regret in the thrall of their little one’s giddy eyes, but the cumbersome manner of his making, would, until then, too solemnly weigh upon them. He hoped his words might lighten them both. 

“Before he became Lord of Imladris, in Elrond’s stead,” he began. “Elladan had recognized my longing and agreed that, in time, we might be fathers. As time stretched ever on - some thirty years had passed - his impassioned nature was settled some by his entitlement, yet still he would not concede to my desires. He would defer to duty, he said he would not share my fine company, he cited reputation and honor, our binding vows and the painful aftermath of my rejection of him. These matters, however, were long fought out between us; he was afraid. I knew not how to convince him. So, I relented. We would have each other, which was considerable consolation.” 

“What swayed him?” Legolas inquired softly, not wanting to shatter the spell of his remembrances. 

“You own son,” Glorfindel responded, to the archer’s surprise. “Elrohir and I were required by Celeborn in Lorien, we needed absent ourselves but a month. This was too short a time to summon you back from Ithilien, and, as Tathren was quite young still and embroiled in his studies with Erestor, Elrohir left him in his brother’s care. I know not what passed in that month’s time, but, when I returned, Elladan himself proposed it.”

“You have never asked him what convinced?” Legolas queried, taking comfort in the mere event of their discussion. 

“I have indeed,” Glorfindel chuckled. “But he has yet to answer to my satisfaction.”

“What then?” Legolas urged him on, as the next chapter of the tale was of vital import to him. 

“We coupled with a ferocity unknown to man, beast, or Eruchin for a half-year,” the Balrog-slayer slyly admitted, noting Legolas’ rising color. He and Elrohir were, to all appearances, similarly fever-struck. “And sought out a kindhearted elf to mother our babes. We chose her for her deportment and willingness, but if I were to choose again, I might select with more caution. Her decision to remain in Arda has… my sons have paid too high a price, for this.” His dismissed the aggravation that crept over his spine at the thought, then continued. “On the night in question, she was blessed with a patience few even among our kin will ever know. For weeks before, I had fretted and fumed, not on my own account, but for Elladan. But when I woke that morn and saw him so sickly, so sorrowful, his manner brash and his nerves grating him raw, I knew that I must forget my own selfishness and focus on his needs. If I recall, the playing-out of our little drama was almost too comedic. Elladan was unsteadied by dwarven wine, but after some effort, still proved impotent. Not wanting to burden them with my presence, I waited far away, but was soon precipitously summoned to their chamber. My poor husband was maddened by the wine, weeping and listless, it took an hour of my most salacious insinuations to rouse him. In the end, I had to slink out of the chamber unnoticed and pray for rain, though to this day I know not how she managed to surge his seed to completion.” 

“Abysmal,” Legolas judged, but there was clear mirth in his tone. 

“Indeed,” Glorfindel seconded, glancing back at the busy orchard. “And yet… when Cuthalion swings into our feasting hall, aglow with his day’s fair humor, or Echoriath presents me with one of his awesome designs, I cannot bring myself to imagine our life otherwise. How could it be otherwise? They *are* my life’s work.” 

Legolas shut his eyes, beset by emotion. When they opened again, they alighted on Tathren, carrying a ladder to the next bountiful tree, his cheeks as plump and golden as the peaches therein. Shroud in the aura of this image, Legolas shone again, his earlier gloom cast away by shrewd advice and the comfort of good counsel. 

“Besides,” Glorfindel concluded. “My proud and valorous husband was so plagued by guilt that he worshipped my body nightly, and for months after. Though I wish I could have spared him the shame, I recall those hot nights with terrible fondness.” 

At this, both wicked-eyed elves surrendered to their snickering. 

* * * 

Though his bonny comrades had welcomed a day’s respite from the rigors of the harvest, Tathren’s nerves had flared at the hesitant announcement on the previous afternoon. After a hectic fortnight of plucking and lugging, the adventurers were spent, their archery and swordplay woefully neglected in their new master’s service. 

As Echoriath had detailed with his usual diligence, the trees themselves required this time of rest; to mend their wounds, replenish their lightened boughs, and feast on the fertile earth beneath. Said fertilization would come not from seeding, but from the sky, for which the gardener needed no company. The company, however, had grown painfully fond of their master, and insisted that he sup with them that very eve, with the blessing of his fathers. Echoriath, as ever, had blushed a fearsome crimson at the concession and timorously agreed, which only endeared him more, to both the explorers and to his rabid-loined cousin. 

The dinner had provoked every thigh-licking thought he had toiled, through arduous nights of self-abasement, to repress; for he could not, despite his most thorough abusing, forget them. During those heady days in the orchard, his preoccupying employment and his vivacious environment had kept his wolfish needs at bay, though he unwittingly watched Elostrion’s interactions like a hawk. That night, at their table, every gaze that gleaned upon Echoriath appeared predatory to him, his own more than any other. Thorontir’s boorishness became lecherous in his red-glazed stare, Glinfalas’ aloofness a cunning ploy to lure his observant attentions, even Rohros, recently betrothed, and Cirhith, no lover of males, were not spared, their patient interest in the darkling elf’s more intellectual conversation perverted beyond reason. The worst offender, and most blatant tease, was of course Elostrion, who, to Tathren’s waning credit, did harbor a secret wanting for Echoriath. Perhaps not so secret, as he had spent the better part of the afternoon demanding of Tathren some hint as to the young master’s tastes, astride the main branch of a pregnant plum tree. That his gracious cousin had bore the company’s most outlandish flirtations with humility and disbelief had been the only thing to hearten him, though the very fact of his own incessant desire shamed Tathren through. 

If, indeed, this wretched agony was desire alone.

His Ada-Hir’s most pointed question had caused him to quest, not over mountain ranges nor fields thick with orcs, but through his haloed remembrances of time spent with his soft cousin. Through his past exploits with male and maid, to uncover a bed-mate’s charms he had hungered for as keenly as this unknown promise, one he had courted who was half as smart, half as sweet natured. Within the confines of his enclosing bedchamber, he had journeyed into the estimated future, to a time when Echoriath might be promised to another and he himself bound. When, between his adventuring and the darkling elf’s ambitions, they would missed each other’s company for decades at a time. True, his last venture in the wilds had spanned nearly a decade, but not a day had passed when he had not missed both his tender cousins. His mind had not long stood such bleak imaginings, his loins had crackled in protest and his heart… 

His heart had sunk like a stone in his chest. 

He had known fear, then, known its bone-coring bite, for he knew himself born under the black star of Thranduil’s shadow and that all his golden father’s misgivings may very well come to pass. 

For he could not appease this wanting in other than Echoriath’s bed. 

Still, he was no wanton. His jealous streak was fitful, but he was no cur. The offer, as per his Ada-Hir’s sage suggestion, would be put to the darkling elf with gentility and some well-planned encouragement; if he was refused, then so be it. Tathren well-knew the magnitude of his request, he could school himself to accept whatever answer now awaited him in the orchard quiet, where Echoriath would soon summon the rain. 

Under the lush midsummer boughs, he would woo his genial one with a skill he hoped akin to that of his wise father, once upon a time. 

*

When he sung the first, vital note, the trees veritably writhed in rapture. Too long had their boughs been handled by a lesser touch, their hollows and shades invaded by roughshod elves, unlearned in his giving ways of old. He had planted them, reared them from saplings, nourished their soil with the rose-blended mulch they favored and mended them with moss plasters after storm. Summer-thick sap flooded their branches with the same gushing, heedless flow as blood through his veins, the aura of his heart unbound feeding them, healing them, willing them to molt their bark-scabs and open to the over-misting sun. 

Above, clouds of twilight blue gathered at his beckoning over the barren trees, wafting into swollen form like faraway ships in a gale. The wilded wind rippled through the lapping leaves, billowed through his loose shirt; its feral gusts moist, ripe with the coming rain. His face upturned in abject worship, his arms outstretched, supplicant, he culled the yearning trees with full, impassioned song, luring their lithe, wispy spirits into blissful communion. 

The sky cracked, and begat a spell of pummeling rain. 

The trees’ essence surged, shrieked their pleasure, and Echoriath himself shook amidst their throes. Their bond severed, his song was choked off by a mouthful of rainwater. He spat a vaulting spray over the grass, then coughed mightily to clear his throat. Sensitive, shivering, and soaked through in the wake of his otherworldly summons, he hugged his puckering arms tight and squished through the strip of long grass in the middle lane. He could still make out eager sucks, slurps, and swallows amid the din of the leaf-tapping shower, his orchard would soon be thoroughly quenched and ready to grow again. 

With a playful smile, he swerved to avoid a squashed pear, one of the few casualties of the explorers’ first afternoon at harvesting. The stomped pulp and broken skin would only serve to enrich the soil; Echoriath had even considered sacrificing a bushel per rung of trees, but knew they would never forgive him. Instead, he would surreptitiously blend some into their beloved mulch, thereby tempering their scorn and keeping peace between them. 

Before he could even consider how to broach the matter of ‘the intruders’ without their rotting their trunks in anger, he stopped cold. Tathren, drenched through, awaited him beneath the tallest cobapple tree, his flinty eyes sparked with a haunting incandescence even on this sallow afternoon. Bleached pale by the rain but strikingly handsome, Echoriath could not keep himself from sneaking under the drooping branches to join him in secret sanctuary. This elicited a smile worthy of Arien’s radiance, which warmed them both considerably. 

“You shiver with cold, gwador,” Tathren seized him up immediately. “Why have you no cloak?” 

“I had not thought to tarry here,” Echoriath answered plain, but was quick to approach him. 

In truth, his limbs quaked not from rain nor chill, but were still electric with aftershocks from his communion. This same dizzy magnetism drew him ever closer to Tathren, the pull of whose ensorcelling eyes he could not, in his tremulous and heady state, long resist. He watched his lips, petal-pink from the cool rain, speak to him, but could not mark the words, such was the lure of their subtle dance. None had ever intruded upon one of his rituals afore, thus Echoriath could not have forewarned his too-fair-by-far cousin away and spared himself the embarrassment that was sure to come. For even from within the fugue of desire than suddenly engulfed him, his ever-sharp mind recognized and alerted some dormant part of him to the dangerous, potentially brazen behavior that might result. 

He stumbled back a few steps, wrenched his eyes away. 

“You are weary, my brave one,” Tathren surmised, twisting and snapping a last, unpicked cobapple from a nearby branch. “The spell-caster need take as much replenishment as the enchanted orchard.”

He chomped off a generous bite, then offered him the remainder. Echoriath gladly accepted the dripping fruit, sinking his teeth into the sweet flesh and crunching out a bite of his own. The tart juice pricked his tongue, though his mouthful nearly melted when Tathren licked his own lips clean. Something in his cousin’s piercing eyes stung up the length of his spine. He swallowed hard, the pulpy liquid oozing like honey down his throat and pooling heat in his nether regions; Echoriath knew that if he did not seek true shelter soon he would loose what brittle hold still straightened him. The air between them seemed thick as glass, though Tathren’s sodden, golden hair shone like a crown. At once terrified and energized, he flicked a stray lock behind his own peaked ear. 

Tathren’s hawkish eyes snapped to attention, something broke within him. 

When he began to ease towards him, eyes luminous as sapphires and visage of sobering intent, Echoriath’s breath caught, his legs buckled, and he knew, he *knew* with will-shattering clarity what would come next. He wanted it like nothing he’d ever wished for; the sword-hewn arm that closed around him, the calloused hand that cupped his face, the breath that misted over his mouth seconds before those petal-lips suckled him, fleeting as the flutter of a bird’s wing yet betraying a fallacious heat. Echoriath suddenly loathed that Tathren was so gentle with him; he wanted no maiden’s kiss, but one deserving of a mate. 

When Tathren drew delicately away, Echoriath met his mouth with ardor, pouring every last reserve of longing into this first, breathless embrace. To his great encouragement, Tathren broke away panting, stunned, but deliciously so, by the darkling elf’s daring. The piqued explorer ventured forth again, catching that luring bottom lip between his own and sucking softly. Echoriath let his mouth be savored, the top lip receiving equally sweet attention, then both voluptuous curves were lapped suggestively. Tathren finished him off with a lingering caress, resting their by-now baking foreheads together. He brushed lazy fingers over his flush cheeks, chuckling to himself, then knit him into a closer hold. 

“*Valar*, but you are lovely,” Tathren murmured. 

Though he did not for a moment trust his voice, Echoriath was desperate to know what in Elbereth’s name had transpired here. Still, he was not known for eloquence. 

“H-how…?” he stammered. At this too-careful inquisition, Tathren seemed to come into his senses, though he did not move to release him. 

“I thought…” he began, but then considered the matter some. “Since my return, I have been rather… entranced, by your beauty. I was not unaware of your comeliness before, mind, but in my years abroad you have become so… so pearlescent in your twilight lushness that I… Your brother told me that you were untouched and I found I could not, after coming to know you again these past weeks, allow your innocence to go unchallenged. Therefore I…” Those bedazzling eyes fixed on him anew, their jeweled luminescence so overwhelming that he nearly gasped. “Echoriath, I would invite you, at your leisure, to my bedchamber. I would guide you in whatever love-rites you might wish to be introduced, in whatever desire or manner of loving you might take pleasure. In which we would both, of course, take ample pleasure.” He finished this last with a rather saucy cull on his gaping, though willing, mouth. “*If* you would have me…” 

“I would,” Echoriath instantly agreed, with such earnestness Tathren nearly forgot the whole affair. “When shall I come?” 

“As you wish,” Tathren answered, astonished that something so long simmering could so effortlessly come to a boil. 

“Tomorrow, then?” he requested, then thought better of his pliancy. “I would come tomorrow night.” 

“Very well,” Tathren beamed at him, so glorious in this hush moment that Echoriath’s eyes brimmed. He stole another kiss to stave off his tears, then mewled when Tathren did finally release him. “Think on what pleasures you might enjoy, lirimaer.”

“I will think on nothing else,” Echoriath pledged, then – to his horror – realized he had spoke aloud. A flattered smile from his cousin calmed him, emboldened him. “Nor have I thought of else since… your return to Telperion, tathrelasse.” 

“But…” Tathren’s entire countenance clenched as though to avoid a slap, yet his face colored as if he’d verily been struck. “You hold no favor for Elostrion?” 

Echoriath likewise tensed, intuiting the overbearing import of his response. “Nay. I do not immediately lend my heart to those whom my brother would choose for it.” After some hesitation, he snatched up Tathren’s trembling hands and kissed his agile archer’s fingers with considerable intensity. “Though I may be banished forever for even the barest conception of the feeling, there is but one in all my hundred years who has… moved me. Bade me forget the cares that shun me from the world and wrought my… my desire.” 

No longer trembling hands smoothed up his arms, then, sweeping the slender slope of neck and cupping the noble-slanted jaw anew to scorch his mouth with an embrace of pure, sensual need, such as Echoriath had never known before. If the promise of this kiss unbound heralded the coming night’s indulgences, then his dreams were but sketches of an altogether more riveting and unpredictable design. He reeled, from the woozy tree-trance, from his cousin’s blistering overture, from the heat that now coursed into him through their immaculate connection. 

With a palpable groan of frustration, Tathren pushed him away, so flamed by arousal that he could not look him in the face.

“Come tomorrow,” he beckoned, then staggered back into the rain. 

 

End of Part Three


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our comely young elves wholeheartedly choose the path of most resistance.

Part Four

The crescent moon hung in the misty midnight like a scythe waiting to strike, held aloft of the earth by Elbereth’s grace alone. Her sallow cast shroud the forest in a halting darkness, even the dew glistened wanly across the gravel-textured lawns that surrounded the sloped-roof Healing Halls. From the study, Elrond watched the very elf he waited upon emerge from the woodland path and float through the waist level fog, lithe as a specter in his diaphanous coat. 

A sharp cry sounded behind. With a nod, none could tell whether of approval or resignation, Elrond quit the window. The trouble that had torn Elrohir from his husband’s arms this night had roused the Lord himself an hour before, but he was no more readied than his unassuming son for the painful task ahead. As he slipped surreptitiously back into the surgery, the sight that awaited him did little to soldier his resolve: Erestor strung tighter than his bond-son’s most exacting bow, Haldir bale-faced beside his horror-struck brother, Rumil, and, on the table, Rumil’s poorly son, Ivrin. Hard living in the brute, perilous northern realm had spirited Rumil’s mate, Anamir, to Mandos the year before, leaving the Galadhrim to raise their little ones alone, twin ellyth not yet twenty years on and this spritely ellon, but three. Ivrin’s sisters had unadvisedly brought their precocious brother tree-climbing, during which, in a rotten turn of fate, the elfling had lost his toddler’s footing and tumbled from the higher bows of a grand, golden mallorn. His spine, by some gifted magic of the Valar, was unbroken, but his legs were shattered and his left arm savagely snapped. The warriors of the tribe had set the legs with considerable care, if not skill, but the arm, thought only sprained, was neglected in their haste to Telperion and mended in an improper form. 

The only remedy was to snap it and allow the break to mend anew. 

They had come, Rumil and his small company of friends, directly to Erestor upon late night arrival, but the Loremaster and skilled healer could not bring himself, as continued to be readily apparent by his blanched cheeks, to perform the necessary procedure on his tiny nephew. When Elrond required a second, he could think of none but his stalwart Elrohir, who had, many millenia ago, suffered an injury in similar need of resetting, though he had been well into his third century at the time, not merely his third year. 

After testing the child’s brow, Elrond cursed inwardly. In their fever to break new ground, the Silvan and Dorian colonists had forged into the northern county with even the smallest of their families in tow, a dangerous proposal even in Valinor’s wilds. Though no Shadowspawn would plague them, there were also no amenities yet constructed to properly care for accidents of this regretful nature. The Lord was again reminded of the vital necessity of surveying, planning, and slowly building up a site; a charge set to the bands of explorers in his own realm under the rapt supervision of the High Council. If the other tribes of his people had been more open to their advisement, as Elrond himself had dug the very cellars of Imladris, this tender one would have been spared weeks of never-ending agony. 

By Rumil’s bleak countenance, the lonely father knew only too-well what misery wreaked his child. In his over-creased face, Elrond perceived the barely held restraint that kept him from cradling his son, the ever constant, inner reminder that such an action would only cause further injury, perhaps even torturous pain. Ivrin’s spirit, however, needed as much tending as his frail body, so Rumil rested a hand on his elfling’s heaving chest and regarded his son intently. 

“Ada?” Elrohir beckoned his father’s attention, a moment after shedding his light coat. “What has happened?” That he had dressed in urgency was readily apparent by his loose-laced breeches and the askew collar of his shirt, which failed to hide, to Elrond’s hairsbreadth of mirth, a love-bit trail of purple marks from the right of his neck to his shoulder. 

Roused in the dead of night, indeed. 

Any further amusement was staved off, however, when Elrohir took measure of the surgery table and those gathered there. In his argent eyes a great, haunting sympathy was reflected, as none could mistake the awkward position of the elfling’s left arm. After a fortifying inhalation, he slipped into their circle and immediately assumed the well-hewn role of master diplomat. 

“Greetings, gwador,” he focused on Rumil, anticipating the protests that would soon come to pass. “Though gladdened by your arrival, I would not dare charge you well-met. How may I be of assistance?” 

Elrond sighed imperceptibly, too heartened by his son’s intuition and grace under fire. 

“I will stay the course,” Rumil barked wearily at him. “I have seen the rage of battle, treated wounded, been wounded myself. I will not be parted from him.” 

“None among us doubt you, gwanur-nin,” Haldir reassured him. “But no father should witness the maiming of his child. It is a matter of instinct.”

“I have weathered far worse,” he rasped, a chill clouding his eyes like wind over an arctic ocean. None present could help but recall the manner of Anamir’s demise, drowned in the implosion of a too-deeply dug well. “I will weather this.” 

With a pointed look, Elrohir unsheathed the slender mithril rod that would serve to snap the bone true. Eyes wide as saucers, Rumil bit back a howl of protest. Surely the rod was too heavy for such a fragile limb! When Elrohir set the implement beside the oblivious elfling, Rumil visibly clenched. He may be proud, but he was not foolish enough to believe himself capable of bearing silent witness to the harrowing procedure. With a gentility known to few of the warriors among their kind, Elrohir covered the beleaguered father’s hands with his own, then patiently lifted them away. To Elrond’s surprise, Elrohir then drew the stubborn elf into a firm embrace. He whispered to him in the assonant tongue of longtime swordbrothers, which was the final blow to his resolve. 

Flanked by Erestor and Haldir, Rumil was soon led into the hearthglow of the anteroom beyond the surgery doors. 

Elrohir caught his father’s smirk; he was impressed. 

*

Hours later, Elrond gathered himself into his favorite armchair by the roaring fire, wretched with the echo of the child’s cracking arm and needful of his own blithe son’s steady company. As they could administer no sleeping drought to one so small, so beset by fever, Elrohir was curled into the rocking chair, vigilant arms cradling Ivrin as they calmly swayed to and fro. Upon knowledge of the procedure’s success and the first sight of his bandaged son, Rumil, blighted with exhaustion after five days of incessant riding, had fainted into his brother’s arms. He now slept, immovable and fully clothed, in a bed nearby, with Erestor and Haldir tucked into a cot beside. 

As he himself sipped a remedial tea, brewed by his lovely, stealthy wife, Elrond could not help but note the subtle shades of emotion that drifted across Elrohir’s rapt face. Concern, remembrance, serenity, and an irreconcilable sadness colored his son’s regal countenance, but the boldest hue was a blue longing, tinged as ever by white-knuckled fear. Though Elrohir had yet to confide in him, all in their close family had some knowledge of the obscure, unfathomable susurrations of distress between him and his bonded. Through a series of hints, feints, and unvoiced implications, Glorfindel had related to Elladan, who in turn had mentioned some speculative notions to his parents, that the couple weighed the heavy impact of another child on their intensely loving marriage. Elrond, though unsurprised that Legolas considered the matter with meticulous caution, had been stunned to learn that it was Elrohir, and not the archer, who had yet to be swayed. 

Observing him now, so reverent of the little golden one in the bow of his arms, Elrond was doubly disbelieving of his reluctance. 

“Does he yet slumber?” he inquired, drawing Elrohir’s softened eyes. 

“Nay,” he replied hushly. “The pain lingers still. Yet his flame is strong and constant, sleep will not tarry long.” 

“And the fever?” 

“Tempered some, but not fully drained from him,” Elrohir judged, resting his cheek on the elfling’s glistening brow. “We might try some tea, on the morrow…ah. There.” As Elrohir slowed his rocking, tiny legs went limp; the child sank against him, burrowing his scrunched face in his shirt. 

Sleep had vanquished him at last. 

Elrohir chuckled, eyes stuck on his young charge. “He is so like my Tathren, this tender one. Only after hours of rocking would he give in to his fatigue, his thirst for knowledge of the world around him ever firing him, even to the point of insomnia. What I would not give for just one more night of caring for that fretful babe of mine.” His quicksilver eyes found solace in the flickering hearth, sanctuary from his creeping sorrow. “He is so willful, Ada, so needful of autonomy. I could never burden him with my sadness at his prolonged adventuring, but I feel his absence too keenly, at times. And I… I sometimes fear…” Elrohir caught himself, before he said too much. 

“Thranduil,” Elrond spoke what his son could not. “His blood legacy. That Legolas, in keeping Tathren from knowing his grandsire unwittingly encourages, in hand with inexperience, behaviors that might otherwise be checked and overcome.” The Lord and father had himself long considered this, but his feelings were less than resolved. “Yet knowing Thranduil might not lessen his effect on Tathren.”

“This I well know, Ada,” Elrohir exhaled longly. “His influence, present or no, has wrought little but the most corrosive shame in Legolas.”

Elrond carefully worded his next question, but could not keep it back. “Is this what keeps you from… from fatherhood, yourself?” 

“I *am* a father,” he growled, then remembered himself before his own sire. Yet the resulting scowl was not unnoticed. “My brother has a loose tongue.” 

“We have each of us wondered, ioneth,” Elrond elucidated, with ample patience. “Gwanur, Adar, and Naneth alike, why, in light of Elladan’s own action, you and Legolas did not follow suit with a sibling for your golden child. By the Valar, do not name Thranduil as the cause.” 

“I knew not the number of our family to be of such engrossing debate,” he snapped, instinctively tightening his protective hold over the child in his arms. “The matter is between Legolas and I.” 

“It is the ‘between’ you speak of that preoccupies us,” Elrond insisted, with great affection. “The unwavering heat and ardor of your loving bond is an example to us all. We would not it be overburdened, especially by such slight trouble as this.” 

“A *slight* trouble?” Elrohir started. “The breaking of our binding vows?” 

“Methinks that is Legolas’ argument,” Elrond countered. “Though he himself would be loathe to speak it, even in this instance.” 

With a grunt of frustration, Elrohir struggled to control himself, if only for the sleeping child’s sake. In truth, Elrond had never seen his pure-balanced son so provoked by mere debate. The master diplomat uncharacteristically fought as desperately as a caged warg; clearly the action required of him for the siring of another babe struck deep within, to the very core of his self-definition as constant and adoring mate. When his consoling eyes attempted to balm his son’s itching spirit, he found Elrohir furiously blinking back tears.

“I have searched, Ada, for the wellspring of strength that might allow me to… to…” he haltingly explained himself. “But I have yet to divine by what manner Elladan brought himself to so forsake Glorfindel, even for but a moment’s time, for but a spurt of seed, given not for love of an ellyth but out of love for an absent husband. I know in my mind that such an act would not be a betrayal, but a tribute, to our binding vows, to my blithe husband, that in some strange way it is the ultimate act of love for him. Perhaps that is why Tathren quits us as he does, why he begs for another to second him, because though my heart rages with love for my son and though I have struggled as Glorfindel before the Balrog to be worthy of him, no other care will ever equal my immortal love for Legolas.” 

To his utter shock, his father laughed at him. 

“Elrohir!!” he protested. “To compare your love for husband to child is to compare titan to colossus! We speak not of degrees of love, but of manners of loving. You may be heartened, ioneth, to know that, though I would give almost anything to have my sweet Arwen home again, I would not even for your sister’s life sacrifice my dearest Celebrian.” The profundity of this statement stilled the elf-knight to silence. “I loved my Evenstar as well as I could, but her destiny lay with Estel my foster child and nothing in my power could keep her from him. Do I love her less for choosing her own path? Nay, I do not. Do I love her more or less than the sons I keep daily counsel with? Never. Would I forsake an eternity with my ethereal wife to stay a hundred years with my daughter before she fades. What think you, Elrohir?” When his darkling son could not find his tongue, he kept on. “Throughout the never-ending span of our lives, ioneth, we are bound over and over again, sometimes tightly, sometimes with the barest link, to those around us. Each of these threads are precious and unique, no relation knit with the same yarn. Some are so tenacious they can never be severed, some so thin that the barest breeze pulls them free, some fray until there is but a strand left, which strangely holds for all eternity. None can be measured against another, for they are all dependent on two solitary souls blown by the winds of fate. Even with my powers, I cannot predict what the future holds for you and your beloved mate, but I can speak of the bond between a child and his sire. I would not have forgone such an experience for any elf’s love. It is the most fulfilling role I have ever charged myself with playing, save that of husband, and I hold the deepest respect for any elf so worthy of the task as you, my dearest one.” 

With that, Elrond eased himself to his feet and sought out Celebrian, leaving his son no little, fateful pondering. 

* * * 

On this night of nights, Ithil was but a slit of silver cloud, a reflection of Taniquetil’s glacial aura, an echo of fog-shroud starlight above him. As he stole through the quiescent forest hollows like a brigand from his master’s house, Echoriath inwardly cursed the ominous sky for its midnight black omen. Yet he kept to the path, kept to his resolve, no matter how unsteady his step, how emulsified his innards, how raucous his ever-reasoning mind, currently leaded down with the milliard questions he should have posed to Tathren that watershed afternoon in the orchard, when his ritual-blighted sorts abandoned him entirely. 

The one grace accorded him was sure knowledge of Tathren’s desire, of which there was nearly too ample evidence. In the sleep between the overture and their impending togetherness, the clockwork logic of his mind had fit the cogs and springs of Tathren’s unwitting machinations into a terrifically fine working order: his defense by the seashore, his initial championing of Elostrion, his fit at the ale hall, his too-doting helpfulness during the harvest, the slaps, pats, pinches, and squeezes that kept them within an arm’s reach of one another throughout their companionship. As he tramped through a barely lit clearing, Echoriath berated himself for his blindness. Though hardly a marksman, one with such an eye for detail as he should have long remarked these subtle shadings to Tathren’s normally carefree nature. Indeed, he would have marked them, if not for his own heart’s too-innocent fluttering, the longing that sprung not from his charred loins but from the essence of his soul flame. 

Where he loved, Tathren merely desired; therein lay the most chafing rub. 

As he approached the thick-wooded pass where Tathren made his home, he lowered the brim of his hood further down his brow and cinched his cloak around his shoulders. Though he could not with good conscience keep himself from this night’s indulgences – too long besotted was he by his cousin’s radiance – nor would he deceive himself as to indulgence’s price. Tathren, his lust slaked, would surely tire of him; how could one so solemn, as he, be worthy of an eternity with the most mercurial elf in the land? Even if, by some wicked twist of fate, Tathren was temporarily deceived by his body’s relentless urgings, surely their fathers would rather see them flayed than bound. Raised as close as brothers of the noblest line, of twin fathers, no less, the people of Telperion knew them as blood relations, not as cousins by affinity alone. Their union would reek of privilege, of incest, of every taint and scandal a Noldor house had ever been accused of by the common Silvan woodsfolk. The making of their marriage bed would awake the unrest of ages past, ire at the perversion of one of their favorite sons. 

Yet even at the cost of fading to grief, he would give himself this one, immaculate night. 

*

When the door swept open and Tathren stood, half-bare and beckoning before him, he knew why the stars had fled. 

Echoriath, breathless, knew not what orb or celestial manifest could best his cousin’s ethereal countenance for luminescence, not the moonstone glow of his bejeweled eyes nor the halo that crowned his golden hair. He was a prince of uncommon majesty, not of dank Mirkwood nor lush Greenwood, but of the vast, ephemeral heavens, where even the Valar dared not roam. 

Yet for all his effervescent grace, the night’s true promise lurked within his muscular form, the proximity of such naked virility instantly evaporating any troths of honorable distance Echoriath had vowed to himself in the dark wood. The diaphanous silk of his sarong hung low on his hips, but not another slip of cloth adorned this resplendent elf of his heart. He had anointed his honeyed skin with lavender oil, the sweet scent so luring that Echoriath failed to note as Tathren shut the door, threw the lock, and welcomed him. 

Only when smoldering iridescent eyes raked the length of his shivering body did his nascent apprehension focus him on the present, on the feral form that stalked towards him. The molten stare that mated with his own, as agile fingers unclasped his cloak, was unknown to him, a regard so foreign, so ferocious, that Echoriath unwittingly sought some glimmer of his cousin’s warmth within his slit-pupils. When the last of his shirt was unhooked and probing hands smoothed up his trembling chest, he pushed violently through them, drawing this strange, aloof creature into a crushing hug. 

Tathren may have gasped, may have snarled; but whatever sound broke from within him, he curled himself around Echoriath and held him for a long while. Soft kisses to his temple, the peach of his cheek, a nip at the peak of his ear told him his cousin had joined them at last. Gentled palms cupped his face, lifted his jaw up so that petal lips could meet his own, easy, embroiling, as that velvet touch sparked the taut skin of his abdomen. 

“May I?” Tathren inquired between thick, sultry culls at his mouth, the seam of the young builder’s shirt sleeves clinging to his lax shoulders. 

Echoriath barely blinked his assent and the shirt slid off, baring an elegant slope of neck Tathren was only too happy to caress with those ready, reddening lips. Between his hazy head and his jelly legs, the young adventurer was veritably holding him upright, though he was soon spread across a nearby loveseat and pressed hot into its satiny cushions. As their sweaty, baking bodies scorched across each other, thigh met thigh, chest met chest, and mouth met open, wanting mouth. When Tathren’s saucy tongue laved the length of his own, tasting the full of him, Echoriath could do naught but abandon himself to the heady thrall of this first, enslaving penetration. 

Echoriath knew, in that sensuous instant, how thoroughly and adamantly he wanted to be taken. 

Cunning fingers singed circles over his sensitive aureole and tweaked the clenched nubs; the resulting moan reverberated across Tathren’s giddy tongue, only urging him to further deepen their kiss, worry those nipples raw, and prod the very wrought evidence of his arousal into the soft of Echoriath’s thigh. When his own engorgement subsequently engulfed his too-cloying breeches and braised its tented-velour tip against Tathren’s navel, the adventurer broke off his body-questing and settled at his side, if not his own precipitous pants. 

Eyes as aged and restless as an ocean met his, the rippling depths of their affection ensured the arms that enveloped him were not snared as chains but balming as the flow of the tide. The simmering gaze sank down, washing over his heaving chest, the swimming heat in his loins, to his breech-bulge. As those lissome archer’s fingers loosed his laces, Tathren looked upon him with concern and no little lust. 

“Are you truly resolved to be loved, lirimaer?” he murmured, his voice frayed. “For if I touch you now… it will be to claim you.” 

In silent reply, Echoriath tugged the last of his laces free and rested Tathren’s hand on his slick navel. The skin beneath liquefied like lava-rock at this sparest touch, his groin swollen so painfully stiff that he whimpered into Tathren’s neck. 

With reverential care, Tathren lowered himself to the floor and shifted Echoriath’s hips before him, his legs splayed wanton. To see his golden cousin so patient when both their desires grated fierce and fiery heartened him, even from within the grip of this peerless, desperate need. At last, Tathren pulled down his tight breeches and bared him. The resulting gasp deliciously twisted his pulpy lips, such that Tathren, amidst his shock, resolved to plundered them again ere the night’s end. More of glutted man’s measure than sleek elven rendering, Echoriath may have been overly blessed by the Eldar in all other aspects of his lank frame, but between his slender legs stood a pillar that would shame the most generously endowed among the Dunedain. His girth unsteadied even one of Tathren’s accomplished skills, though, his mouth suddenly ripe with saliva, he was more than eager to prove himself worthy of the task. 

“Saes, tathrelasse,” Echoriath rasped, flattered by his awe but terrifically needful. “Release me.”

The green elf had expected to be stoked, expertly stroked by hard-laboring hands; he swore aloud at the first steamy swipe of Tathren’s tongue up his length. The golden elf besotted him with unctuous laps, teasing licks, deft squeezes to the knotted base of his shaft, before sucking him into the moist, molten depths of his mouth. His body was electric, enthralled; galled, even, by the waves of rapture that pummeled his nerves and pounded through his veins, as if caught in a cyclone mid-sea. Though he clung feverishly to the incredible feeling, fingers entrenched in Tathren’s flaxen hair, he surged in fiendish release, pouring every last drop of his cream down his cousin’s throat. 

Tathren swallowed, rested a groggy head on his thigh, and purred like a fatted kitten. 

Echoriath, however, felt not a wit sated. 

*

With a gauze-veiled gaze, Tathren looked up at his soft cousin, at the play of emotion over his flush features. As the rush of pleasure ebbed to a gentle, constant stream, he perceived the telltale blush of embarrassment give way to curiosity: ‘by what means did he bring me forth? How might I perform this on him, in turn? What other ways can our bodies be so gloriously mated? Why, despite my most thorough undoing, am I still wreaked with desire?’ This last, glaringly apparent if only by the burnished glow of his eyes, gave Tathren the greatest satisfaction, as he had feared even the most careful coupling might unnerve this tender one. 

Instead, Echoriath’s impassioned wails had obliterated his bashfulness and roused a lover from within. 

As tickling fingertips traced the lobe of his leaf-shaped ear, Echoriath whispered: “W-would you… might I not please you, as well, tathrelasse?” 

With a sigh, Tathren grappled to his feet. He padded over to the pantry and poured himself a glass of miruvor, his carelessly knotted sarong still threatening to bare his hips. He would not allow his eager cousin to see the sodden front, nor the newly stiffening shaft soon erected there. Promise, after all, and some tempting uncertainty would only amplify their pleasure. He felt Echoriath’s amber eyes rake down his back, over his behind, as the still breathless elf straightened himself in his seat. He was unsteady, tightly strung; Tathren would have him unwound before taking him. 

“Would you care for a tonic?” Tathren queried playfully, the tendrils of Echoriath’s frustration creeping over his back. 

“Nay,” he nearly bleated. Melancholy threatened, so Tathren pressed on. 

“If you venture into my bedchamber,” he instructed with softened tone. “I had grandmother fashion you a wrap similar to my own. Of course, she did not think it for her beloved grandchild, but for a… companion of mine. I told her I was quite taken, as I indeed was, with the gray-lavender hue of your formal jacket at the ale house.” The room became so still, Tathren thought he had fallen asleep. “The fabric is silken, sensuous to the touch. I’ve laid out a selection of oils. If you would choose which fragrance you prefer… I thought it most enjoyable to anoint you myself.” 

His feet barely rustled the carpet bristles, so swiftly did he fly. With a proud chuckle, Tathren downed the last of the tart miruvor, then stealthily followed the eager young elf. 

He observed, from the archway, as Echoriath sniffed each bottle in turn, selecting a heather-laced musk that Tathren himself preferred. Bare and breathtaking, Echoriath ambled over to the bed. He sampled the satiny feel of the material, stroking along the folds as if over the sweep of a lover’s back. Tathren could tell by his swaggering stance that he was hard, so wanting for stimulation that his hands shook with the effort to refrain from touching himself. Though the gifted sarong obviously pleased him, he could not bring himself to cover up, intuiting that even the slightest veil over his groin might devastatingly unman him. 

He was as ripe for plucking as a peach of the orchard.

Tathren caught his hand an instant before he gave way to his body’s insatiable demands; Echoriath barely stifled a whine of protest. As the virginal elf struggled to hold his hands aloft, not to turn towards the bristling heat of his cousin behind him, Tathren poured out a generous amount of oil and began to anoint his back. Worshipful, heather-scented palms soon loosened his rigid shoulders, massaged the length of his wiry back, then worked, with something more intent than caring, his plump buttocks. Thinking himself about to be breached, Echoriath leaned towards the bed, but Tathren’s steady arms righted him, as he pressed himself full against his oil-slick back. Echoriath groaned, melting into his embrace, his head lolling wantonly back. More of the salve wet his hands and they roamed, eliciting the most luring, unbidden moans, over firm pectorals, purpled nipples, rippled abdomen, and a navel of such tear-budding sensitivity that Echoriath wrenched his head back and bit a hungry kiss from his mouth. 

Swirling around, he snatched the bottle of oil away and doused his trembling fingers, but inches from their intended destination. Tathren seized his attention by taking his hot mouth, making good on the earlier promise of a thorough plunder, all while guiding the fingers on his swollen shaft, demonstrating at once how he liked to be stroked and how thickly to slick him. The last of his patience smote by this most intimate contact, his body aflame, Echoriath thrust into his arms, letting his neck be sucked violet and the grind of his hips ignited. 

By the time they found the waiting bed, no caution could dissuade him. He bucked up like an unbroken colt, needful, keening, kicking his heels against Tathren’s backside and baring himself for the taking. After halting, and hasty, preparation, Tathren lost what little reason ruled him and sunk into that thrilling, unctuous heat, so scarlet and carnal and sundering that he knew nothing of the world but star-kissed skin, but sensuous ebony hair, but enraptured eyes of giving, incandescent gold. 

They mated with a fever few experience on their bonding nights, neither able, even long after completion, to consider releasing their rapt hold on the other.

This first coupling was, for both, a thoroughly ravaging consummation. 

 

* * *

Though long bonded, entitled, and of a considerably advanced age in comparison to the youngsters that encircled them, Legolas was glad of some revelry this night. Dinner had been a maudlin affair, with Elrohir yet unsettled by some pronouncement of Elrond’s (or merely thought of the sickly child), Tathren closed as a chest of gold farthings, Glorfindel preoccupied by notice of some foreigners coming by the river, Cuthalion in the dumps over his latest irresolvable tryst, and Echoriath strangely, giddily clumsy. Indeed, were it not for Elladan’s witticisms, he would have thought himself supping with a family of unknown relation. 

The ale hall’s lively atmosphere was a balm to his beleaguered spirit, after a long day of archery lessons with his charges, rallying with Haldir and Rumil, and wretched diplomacy in dealings with a soon-departing exploring party. With Glorfindel eventually called away, Elladan had suggested a night in the cups and Legolas was more than eager to oblige him. Even Elrohir, tucked hotly into his side, was eased by his twin’s company; the two had little cause to interact outside of Council matters now that their questing was long done and Elrohir more oft than naught retired to his study after the evening meal. 

As the lute player struck up a familiar tune, they fell into an appreciative lull of silence, he and Elladan exchanging sly glances at the flirtatious younglings that surrounded them. To their bemusement, a sable-haired elf not a year past his second majority smirked salaciously at Elladan from beside the ale barrels, his legs askance to signal his intent. Soon, a whistle sounded to their left, emitted by a green-eyed beauty, whose relentless stare nearly scored a target in the elf-warrior’s forehead. Neither seemed to mark the gold band that signaled the age and honor in which he was bound, nor the brazen maids that routinely fluttered by, like gulls over a fish-splattered beach. They did, however, seize each other up in such a feral manner that Legolas soon feared an incident. Or, perhaps, hoped for one, as a quarrel over Elladan’s virtue would be most entertaining. 

Elrohir, oblivious, dozed in his constant arms.

“You best guard your chastity with a mithril belt, gwador,” Legolas taunted him. “Your comeliness gracelessly unmoors these tenderlings.” 

“More than one would have sequestered you by now, o blonde immaculate,” he retorted dryly. “Were it not for my brother’s lax hand tucked so daintily between your thighs.” Legolas chuckled affectionately, then kissed his beloved’s ebony crown. 

“Methinks Glorfindel best not tarry long,” Legolas upped the ante. “Lest he discover himself the mediator of a fearsome duel for his own husband’s honor.” 

“Ah, they would not dare approach me,” Elladan scoffed, as a cloaked figure did indeed loom behind them, casting a shadow over their wine carafe and honeycakes. 

Legolas gleefully mocked Elladan’s blanched countenance, until the figure drew back his hood and his eldest brother stood before him. 

“Mithbrethil!!” he exclaimed, unsure of whether to be pleased or worried by this revelation. 

He gestured to an empty chair, but his brother refused, seizing up the situation with a hawkish stare. The stately elf, though not of their sire’s taciturn disposition, had never reconciled himself to his youngest brother’s binding with an ellon, though Legolas knew not whether his gender, his peredhil makeup, or his Noldor heritage was truly the deciding factor against his bonded. Conscious of this, Legolas and Elrohir tempered some of the affections they allowed themselves with family when Mithbrethil was about. Yet there was no bad blood between them. It had been through Mithbrethil’s confession of their father’s complicity that Legolas had uncovered the truth of his son’s fraught begetting. While the eldest brother did not leave Mirkwood with the colony, choosing instead to stay and fight from within, they had kept up their correspondence and, once removed to Valinor, hosted his visits every few years. 

Those visits, however, were usually heralded months before. This sudden appearance, on the heels of Rumil’s tempestuous arrival the night before, was unprecedented.

“Well met, gwanur,” Mithbrethil bowed, too formally for Legolas’ liking. Perhaps the familiarity of the ale house disquieted him, or more like the too-public venue for their reunion. “Forgive me for my audacious interruption of your evening, but I would… I would that you accompany me into the glade, a moment.” Elrohir, by this time, cast a groggy glance upwards at the interloper and precipitously straightened in his seat, thankfully allowing Legolas to rise without waking him himself. 

“I surely would,” Legolas beamed at him. “Once you have been properly welcomed.” 

The archer hugged his brother more to rattle him than out of warmth, though the two were somewhat intertwined. Mithbrethil, to his astonishment, nearly ground his bones to dust with the force of his embrace, his face, upon parting, clenched with repressed feeling. Elladan and Elrohir, also bearing too sympathetic witness to his distress, were soon on their feet. With uncommon sobriety, the three followed Mithbrethil out of doors, down to the starlit glade by the riverside. To Legolas’ continued shock, the eldest Prince of Mirkwood was not yet able to entirely release his little brother, not until the sound of the river flow rushed through the sterling night. 

“Forgive me for my stealth, gwanur,” Mithbrethil begged anew. “But I would spare you the… the shame I myself felt, when confronted by… by…” 

“By what force, nin bellas, are you so provoked?” Legolas demanded, growing increasingly concerned for his brother. “Truly, I have never seen you so weirded by circumstance. Tell me what ails you.”

“I swear if I could soften the blow, I would, dearest Legolas,” he vowed with stunning chivalry, before retreating beneath the tree cover. Elrohir was at once at Legolas’ side, not knowing what manner of monster or fiend would emerge anew with Mithbrethil. Elladan, ever vigilant, had drawn his sword. 

None, however, could have prepared Legolas for the floating steps of the one that padded towards him, for his first, breathless sight of star-spun hair, gentled aquamarine eyes, and an ethereal countenance necessarily forgotten for all of his adult life. Indeed, Legolas was so incensed that tears instantly sprung from his eyes, though none could blur the glowing grace of the one before him. 

“Naneth?!” he cried, then raced towards his mother. He paused but a second; she was so beauteous that he wondered if she could truly be real, but at her familiar smile he threw himself into her arms and harkened to her as no other, save perhaps his mate. 

For endless moments, Laurelith held her son, her Legolas, whom she had known but as the tiniest elfling, but could not long keep herself from gazing upon him, grown to such majesty. As her awed eyes took in his golden, unrivalled perfection, Elrohir could not help but mark their too numerous similarities. Though he resembled his father some, Legolas took the lion’s share of his radiance from his shimmering Naneth; the two were almost as twins reunited. 

Little wonder Thranduil went mad when she was taken. 

After such a momentous revelation, Legolas could not long keep his mercurial nature in check, dragging his compliant mother down the slope to meet his bonded. 

“Nana, may I present to you my beloved, Elrohir,” he introduced his elf-knight with unabashed pride. Elrohir bowed primly, but Legolas insisted on demonstrating the fever of their affection with a bristling kiss. To Elrohir’s relief, Laurelith trilled with laughter. “And this is my bond-brother, Elladan.” 

“I am long acquainted with the Sons of Elrond, pen-neth,” she chuckled indulgently, as she curtsied to them both. 

Legolas clasped his mother’s hands again and continued excitedly: “But you are not acquainted, Nana, with… with my Tathren. We have a son. Grown to full majority and an archer of incredible skill, an adventurer by trade. He is named for the willow by the training fields in Greenwood, and he is bold and blithe, kindhearted as few are, so spirited and lovely… Nana, you will adore him.” 

“If he is like the splendid elf you have become, my Legolas, I would be more than heartened to know him,” she replied, with bountiful tenderness. “I hope to know you both, before long.” 

Sorrow struck him them, at all she had missed, at all she had endured, at the unbelievable event of her release from Mandos and at the reality of how little they truly knew of each other. He fell into her arms again and held her despairingly tight, whispering to her of all the secret pledges he’d long stored in his heart. 

There were a lifetime’s cares to tell of. 

 

End of Part Four


	5. Part 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dawn breaks on the morning after many a revelation.

Part Five

Moments before the dawn, Echoriath drifted into wakefulness. 

Not one speck of him felt else but feathery light; he wafted through the tight-wrapped satin sheets like a thistle on the breeze. His syrupy spine was poured over the bed as long-boiled sap over a blanket of winter snow, his rose-baked skin sticky and slick. He had become one with the unctuous heat that enveloped him, cocooned as he was in reams of gossamer cloth, lissome limbs, and long filaments of cornsilk hair. A swan-like slope of neck, a hairsbreadth beyond the reach of his lust-plumped lips, lured him further into woozy consciousness, though he dared not yet break from this sultry husk and shed the last scales of his carapace. Not while his bed-teacher slumbered still, in the hearthstone sleep of the sated. 

When the last whips of pleasure from his first taking had subsided, Echoriath had languished, giddy and overtender, in his new lover’s embrace. After some moments of silent understanding, the sudden mirth often sparked by afterglow had struck them; aided, no doubt, by two fresh goblets of miruvor and the need to be cleansed of their drippings. Tathren had set about this task with his usual wit and wryness, his salacious, oft-vulgar humor eliciting raucous peals of laughter from where he’d once wrought impassioned moans; for they had been cousins long before their intimacy and would be long after. Indeed, Echoriath was so heartened to discover that their familiarity and affection had been amplified, not altered, by their loving, that he had boldly attacked the seasoned adventurer, knowing all too well what sweeps and hollows on his sculpted frame might be tickled to distraction. The playful assault had eventually turned so distracting, his access to his cousin’s body so freely given, that Echoriath could not resist some sensual explorations of his own, with mouth, tongue, and scarlet, though timid, touch. 

Thus his lesson had arduously proceeded, his instructor only too-ready to be employed and deployed for experience’s sake. 

From within the hotbed folds of said instructor’s arms, Echoriath recalled - unable to keep his cheeks from burning a becoming shade of crimson - how pliant, how peerlessly craven Tathren had been. How he’d borne both the blissful agony and the often brute twists of Echoriath’s teasing experimentations in erotic massage. How his ravenous mouth had hovered above the tender elf’s over-frothing erection, indicating the more yielding areas of swollen flesh and explicating the vagaries of technique: how firmly to grasp, how to ghostly taunt, how to lave, grate, and swallow wholly down. How he’d teetered on the breech of the darkling elf’s second penetration for a tortuous eternity, detailing the minutiae of angle, circumference, and depth of thrust. Echoriath’s subsequent ravagement had been double-fold, of element and of intellect. 

Tathren alone could have taken him so. Not once through the heady night had he wondered if another ever could accomplish a similar feat; this morn, in the womb of his arms, the unheralded question had its visceral answer. 

Even if it be his soul’s ruin, he would love no other in Valinor entire, not for the rest of his days. 

This wisdom both thrilled and terrified him. There were, after all, other sides of the coin to consider, to efface, such as their fathers’ wrath, their family’s scorn, and, most potently, Tathren’s own perspective. An adventurer’s heart was boundless as the ocean wide, wilded by enclosure yet constant as the tide. Echoriath had stood tall amidst the battering rush of feeling that coursed from his cousin’s raging spirit, but, through time and the tension of domesticity, the strength within him might slowly erode, along with their cousinly bond. All this philosophy was, at heart, a logician’s pure speculation, unfettered by reality or circumstance, as Tathren had yet to evidence any emotion other than fraternal regard or loin-wrought desire. 

Though, upon waking, his hazy blue eyes were rather tenderly lit. 

“By what conjurer’s art do you smell so sweet, after the fervor of our revels?” Tathren purred against his face. Echoriath chuckled capriciously, but was too dizzy with languor to reply. “Methinks I should have staved off sleep awhile and balmed my own braised body with the replenishing salve. Are you sore, my dear one?” 

“Nay,” he murmured, as their gazes met. “Nor aught but most blissfully, if momentarily, sated. Your benevolence has been… has been such a gift to me, tathrelasse. I… I am no poet, but if I were, I would compose a crown of sonnets heralding your gallant graces, the wealth of your-… compassion.” 

“Such bleak thoughts ever-reign you, nin ind,” Tathren sighed, out of humor. “Twas not for pity’s sake that I had mind to seduce you, nor were my intentions so… so becoming of an honorable elf.” He cinched them even closer together for his confession, his lips pressed hot against the darkling elf’s cheek. “For weeks, your sterling countenance has haunted my dreams, mocking me with its comeliness, rousing me to agonizing ends of want, my desire and my… my envy. Of any other who might dare bask in the aura of your luminous skin awhile, who would take the innocence I sought to claim for my own. I coveted you, my beauteous one, and now that we have so feverishly coupled, I fear I am unmanned by… by my need for you. Echo, will you come again, tonight? Could we not, perchance…?” 

“As long as you will have me,” Echoriath whispered, both startled at his candor and relieved by his request. “I will come.” 

Tathren kissed him with such alacrity at this spare statement, Echoriath feared they might never seek to rise. 

“I would beware such scatterbrained vows,” the golden elf teased, when they could breathe again. “You may be held to them, and we are, after all, immortal.” 

“Unlike some adventurers of note,” Echoriath retorted mischievously. “I am reputed for my constancy.” 

“That you are, pen-neth,” Tathren shot back, then howled as his couple-raw thigh was mercilessly pinched. The bed-teacher soon found himself pinned to his own mattress, his bold-eyed charge smirking above him. 

“I seem to recall no little wonderment, night last,” he taunted imperiously. “When the jewels of my engendering were revealed to your wanton eyes.” The cunning elf deftly slipped between his legs and pressed his indeed wealthy treasures saucily to him. 

“Tyrant!!” he exclaimed, suddenly flush. Though his wicked eyes nearly propelled Echoriath to instant completion, the young elf kept steadily on, hammering another thrust to his hips. “Though I admit Elbereth has, upon reflection, gifted you with incredible girth. Unmatched in breadth and length, some might say, among elfkind.” 

At this too-admiring compliment, Echoriath blushed furiously, but dared not conceal his amber eyes from his daunting tutor. 

“You are too kind, gwa-…” he paused, his ever-ready mind caught by some curiosity. “What… what must I now call you, Tathren?” His lusty intentions forgotten awhile, he slunk further down his cousin’s lank form, crossed his arms over his chest and rested his chin at their joining, to mark him more attentively. 

The golden elf’s face softened, his affection too plain. “What do you wish to call me, Echo?” 

“I know not,” he admitted bashfully. “In company, I would call you gwador, as ever, but here between us, it is too… you are…” 

“You are lirimaer,” Tathren beamed up at him. “My lovely one. And I think it not too coarse, nor too rife with meaning, to call you meleth within the privacy of our bedchamber, as I have one or two of my past lovers, if you would accept and employ the appellation with the respect it is given, that of heart’s brother and object of my most intemperate desires.” 

“Very well,” Echoriath smiled indulgently, as he had not ever smiled to another. “*Meleth*.” 

“This, however, raises a more pregnant issue,” Tathren continued hushly. “One I have myself long contemplated, long reasoned over, but to no avail. What think you, Echo, of keeping our relations… for us alone? Indeed, quite… secret?” Though Echoriath was not taken aback by his proposal, he did not immediately reply, but pondered the matter some in the light of the totality of his recent experiences.

“Though I am but newly versed in such relations, as you say,” he ventured. “I see little worth in worrying our betters by… we are, after all, but lovers awhile.” 

“Cousins and lovers both,” he exhaled, as if the utterance alone were shameful. “Our fathers, methinks, would not take kindly to such news as ours. I know not what the future may beset, but for the present moment…” 

“We are agreed, tathrelasse,” Echoriath finished for him, prickled by his glint to the future. Be it from headiness or other abasement of logic, said eternity, after the requisite slow-burn courtship, proved rife with potential. He plucked a kiss from his lover’s mouth to seal the pact, then rested their foreheads together. “I must away. I would bathe in the river before breaking fast and my fathers will not take my absence lightly.” 

“Then I will meet you in the oak thicket after noontime, gwador,” Tathren proclaimed, swooping in to caress him once more. “And you, lirimaer, late this midsummer eve, after revels.” 

“We both hungrily await your company, meleth,” Echoriath rumbled, with undisguised heat, as he threw off their covers and took his first, wobbly step of this hallowed morn. 

* * * 

Cuthalion was befuddled, and no little bemused, by the gangly and distracted spirit that possessed his haggard brother this morn. 

After stealing away from the frankly commonplace charms of the striking but vapid elf he rebounded with evening last, he hastened to their fast breaking, where they were to plan out this first day’s construction on their apartments. The premier task of the coming afternoon, the cutting of builder’s wood from a thicket of mighty oaks, needed be performed with the utmost delicacy and care, in order to preserve the sanctity of their forest home. The sacrifice of the ill and aged trees, years before their impending, but inevitable, decay in order to ensure the hardiness of the wood, must be given due reverence by those who claimed to be their guardians; Echoriath and Cuthalion chief among them, as they would inhabit the finished talans. Thus, before a saw was wielded or an axe uncloaked, a morning of choral litanies would be sung, soothing hands laid on the becalmed trunks, and silence observed for an hour of deference, as they encircled their familiar trees. While Cuthalion had participated in these rites many times before, most of the exploring party were new to them, so their plans, their vital instructions, need be precise and exacting. 

The rather startling sight that greeted his entrance to the banquet hall gave him some concern, but greater amusement. Garments plastered to his still-damp frame and black hair sodden, trickling down his back to a pool beneath his chair, his timorous twin shoved oatcakes into his mouth as if he’d been starved by heathens for a half-century. He stopped only for slurping gulps of oarberry juice, the scarlet liquid dripping down to his neck, in his ardor, and staining the cerulean blue collar of his raiment. By the circle of empty trays around him, his honey-smeared fingers and his crumb-scattered plate, he had been feasting for no little time, with such ravenousness as Cuthalion had never before witnessed in him. Echoriath was ever one to peck at his food, impassive and elegant as a finicky heron; he would not dare break off even the driest frond of lembas without proper utensil. The velocity and disarray of this precipitous repast was without precedent for his younger brother. As their bewildered housekeeper crossed by with a steaming bowl of berry porridge, her anxious eyes begged him for some respite, some explanation as to their dearest Echoriath’s wolfish appetite. 

In truth, he could think of none, so he plunked himself down at table and raised an inquiring brow. 

Juice-stained lips smiled at him with such unabashed warmth that Cuthalion nearly shoved back his chair and hoisted his sweet twin into an hug, unseemly as the gesture might be at such an early hour. As he himself tucked readily in to his too-welcome porridge, he marveled at how furiously and relentlessly Echoriath gorged himself. Before long, he’d consumed two entire bowls, another tray of honeycakes, four slices of lembas with plum jelly, three cups of juice, and a half a pot of tea, to aid in his all-too-vital digestion. Before they departed, he merrily requested a skin of calf’s milk and some nut-spinach wraps from cook, not to mention the peaches and cobapples he packed; his only words, though ever gracious, to his brother were in regards to what stores he might also want of. When Cuthalion replied he would share his own, Echoriath bashfully doubled his order, though one would be hard-pressed to tell who was the more surprised, the darkling elf at his brother’s temperance or the silver elf at his twin’s seemingly bottomless stomach. 

This timid one’s bedevilment continued throughout the morn. While the rituals were explained, and then re-interpreted by Cuthalion into common-speak, with efficiency, precision, and the proper application of emphasis, Echoriath’s mind was, for the lion’s share of their hour-long mediation, wholly away from the proceedings, as evidenced by his gauzy, absent eyes. Indeed, these unknown and unforgiving preoccupations plagued him through the noontime meal, where their Ada-Fin needed trouble to raise his voice to rouse his attention. This, in itself, was no strange occurrence, as Echoriath was often caught devising when in familiar company, but their father repeated himself three times before his son properly comprehended his rather, after all, frivolous question. 

As his foggy-headed twin blundered through the early afternoon among the tempered oaks, Cuthalion began to fear he had taken sick, as Echoriath himself became increasingly frustrated with his own lack of focus. Though the explorers managed the most brutal task of sawing down the trees, Echoriath was charged with guiding their aim. While no other trees were hit, the builder himself, over and again, barely escaped being crushed by a tumbling titan, such that Cuthalion had to quietly suggest he retire himself to trunk-scoring. Improper shaving of bark caused a splinter to lodge just shy of his eye; when he turned his inattention to axing off the slighter branches, he almost severed his own fingers. He tripped over logs, snarled his sleeves in the more spindly boughs, and fell to contemplation of the leaves for great, blank-faced expanses of time, until some companion snickered and he broke from his enchantment. The explorers found their weirded master too charming, encouraged by some evidence of imperfections and intrigued by the impetus for his fugue states. 

Cuthalion, however, was rather overly concerned. His brother had never behaved this way before, never missed an axe-stroke, never dodged a falling tree, never splintered wood, and never, despite he and Tathren’s most devious mocking, daydreamed through meditations. If not for his – again, rare and unnatural – self-effacing and downright pleasant attitude towards his mishaps, he would have long fetched their grandsire. To add to his intrigue, and no little to his disquiet, Echoriath himself recognized his ungainliness. When he jovially suggested better occupation at his forge, Cuthalion almost objected, if only to prevent the blaze that might subsequent erupt or the forever-scarring burns that might result from the flighty manipulation of molten glass. Echo’s manner, however, indicated that he might not truly take up this or any such task, so Cuthalion reluctantly excused him, with a promise to take council with him before the evening meal. 

At that, Echoriath remarked that he would stop by the kitchens on his way, and did anyone require some refreshment? 

Cuthalion knew not whether to chuckle or chide him. 

* * * 

No more poignant argument for the enlargement of their family could be made to the esteemed Elf-knight of Telperion than the hallowed domestic scene before him.

The blistering noontime sun was blighted by the oval skylight above their meal table, absorbing the brunt of the rays, imbuing the air itself with high lights and low lights of shimmer. He was the lone darkling elf assembled at the elliptical table, each one of the Silvan kin rendered beatific by the sun’s gossamer radiance: Mithbrethil the rich amber of topaz, Tathren of mellower honey, Legolas of flaxen mane, and Laurelith the white-gold of pure ore. None observing them could mistake the common thread of their heritage, Laurelith’s poise and humility bequeathed to her courtly sons, later passed on to the youngest among them. When they jested, the mischievous glint in his mercurial son’s eyes could be traced back through his father’s, to his spritely grandmother. Indeed, Laurelith wasted no time on gray tales of Mandos, but listened attentively to any tale her three ‘young ellon’ had to recount, of their lives, loves, and adventures. 

These last Tathren doled out with some hesitation, preferring to defer to his father and his uncle. Elrohir implicitly knew that his brave one was learning more about his father’s early life in Mirkwood from this hush afternoon than he had in a hundred and forty-two years, as clearly evidenced by the firm set of his jaw. Indeed, as Legolas and Mithbrethil wove for their mother a quilt of their childhood and adolescent experiences, his ocean blue eyes became increasingly overcast with the knowledge that none of these tales had been shared with him afore. Yet he remained rapt with attention, still as Elrohir had never seen him, though one of his bowsman’s acuity must by now have marked how the Mirkwood brothers avoided the description of many a dark decade, many a conflict between sire and sirelings. 

That the telling of those disagreements was only too-well known to Tathren impressed severely upon the Elf-knight. 

Legolas, for his part, was transformed by his Naneth’s ethereal presence. One of her sleek, elegant arms ever-tucked between his own, he basked in her relentless regard, spinning tale upon tale if only to see her peerless smile again. Elrohir would have had ample cause to be envious, if he were not so sympathetic; he himself had reunited with his Naneth upon their advent in Valinor. While he was long acquainted with his dear Nana, Legolas had had no such luxury, no such supportive maternal shadings to his wildwood upbringing. Thus Elrohir, as patient, model husband, had in hours past borne a night-stretch of relentless chatter from his overexcited mate, who plotted their next months with a desperate, childlike eagerness and painted the future in the hues of a glorious sunset. Not that their future exploits had been so bleak beforehand. 

None among the company dared raise the ghost of one who nevertheless lingered unbidden among them, his majestic and oppressive presence looming on the outskirts of their fervent conversation. There were moments when, Elrohir noted with some concern, Legolas skated so fleetly past the mention of his sire that he feared he might, in his ardor, unwittingly tumble into the hazardous banks that buffered his tale and his Naneth would see how greatly he stumbled. Tathren, keen as ever, chose to wait aloft from this trouble out of deference to his father’s obvious cheer; yet his hawkish eyes marked each hesitation, each absence, as if a black pebble in a secret ballot. When Elrohir wove a comforting arm around his son’s shoulders, he veritably sprung up in his seat, though the Elf-knight alone fell victim to the flash of his stormy eyes. 

Collecting himself, Tathren sunk back against his father; the violet-blue circles of fatigue around his watery eyes only then apparent. As he pulled back the curtain of golden hair and rubbed the back of his weary son’s neck, he loosed his fitted collar enough to spy the garland of crimson culls hidden beneath. With the others occupied by some sprawling tale of his husband’s, he tickled the circumference of one of these scars, bow-shaped and red as only another’s mouth could smear him. He smirked approvingly at his son, who faintly blushed and would not meet his eyes. 

Tathren’s mood, however, visibly lightened at this inward remembrance of his scarlet night.

Elrohir resumed his ministrations, and murmured: “Could it be you have made your choice regarding a certain elf’s too-besetting innocence?” 

“He is innocent no longer,” Tathren admitted in a low-voice, to shush him. 

Elrohir smiled softly to himself. Though unobtrusively reprimanded by his son, Tathren nevertheless betrayed a warmth and pride that gave away his self-satisfaction; by his tender countenance, the love-act had affected him just as eloquently as his young charge. 

“Is your path resolved, then?” Elrohir inquired beneath his breath, too curious to help himself. “Will you court him?” 

Tathren opened his mouth to speak, but thought better of the biting retort that tipped his tongue. 

Instead, he whispered: “I would deserve him, ere I woo his too-ample heart.” 

Just as Elrohir thought to quest further into the gnarled brush of this enigmatic response, Legolas, his face ashen, extricated himself from his mother’s hold and rose haltingly to his feet. He slunk soundlessly into towards the glass doors of the terrace, his eyes sightless, his cheeks blanched of their rosy mirth. Tathren clenched beneath his fingers; they both knew instantly what had been proposed. The inevitable. 

The ghost in the room had taken stealthy, strident form. 

“Gwanur, all is not now as once before,” Mithbrethil attempted to reassure him, also rising. “Nana is returned to us… She is eager to reclaim her lost love.” The mere thought of his Naneth loving such a tyrant made Legolas swallow back a retch of disgust. “Surely past woes, even such trenchant hurt as you have known, can be…” Legolas spun on his heel, his eyes a fiery frost. 

“*What*, Thilion?!” he seethed. “Forg-“ He bit back the last of his words with one look at his mother’s face. “Forgive me, Nana, I must… I must take some air…” 

Legolas broke open the terrace doors and escaped into their garden, stomping a swift path towards the shelter of their favorite willow. Mithbrethil snorted with frustration, both at his brother’s behavior and at the necessary explanations he was left to give his forlorn mother. Laurelith herself had grown terribly pale. Elrohir wondered, not for the first time that day, how perceptively she might have already predicted her sons’ suffering in her prolonged absence. 

Before he could bleat a proper excuse to follow his furious mate, Tathren leapt into action and blazed out into the day. With a soft nod, Mithbrethil assured him all would be well-kindled there, while Elrohir left to smother the flaming ires of his firebrand family. After a deep, centering breath, Elrohir slipped into the garden, careful to shut the terrace doors behind him. As he trod the path into the willow thicket with measured steps, he muttered a prayer to kindly Elbereth, for he too-well knew this particular conversation would require every grace of diplomacy the Lady had gifted him. 

He came upon them in the clearing between the willows and the open forest, Legolas tight as a fist, Tathren’s stabbing eyes locked on his stubborn father. Neither yet spoke, but Elrohir dreaded silence as much as speech itself. With a few hours vital repose for both of his blonde treasures, their debate might have been fraught, but their regard ever-fond. Sleepless and frayed, their warrior natures reared their implacable heads, waiting, like preying falcons, for the moment to strike. 

Elrohir knew the only suitable gambit was to stand between them; he did so. 

“Ada,” Tathren snarled, but dared not move closer. His darkling parent may be a diplomat, but he was no weakling lay-elf. “I would have my answer.” 

“Though I have not heard the question spoke,” Elrohir tempered him. “I yet wonder at its timeliness, ioneth.” 

“Ada!!” Tathren shouted anew, and Elrohir knew this last was not for him. 

“*Saes*, Tathren,” Elrohir soothed, taking slow, cautious steps towards him. “He is tender. You know well Ada-Las has not seen his Naneth since his most delicate infancy. One cannot mend five hundred years of lashes in one balmy afternoon.” 

“Ever has he denied me right to know him,” Tathren mercilessly accused. “Since the night of my begetting, he has conspired to shelter me… from what?! Whose tales were those spun with the deftness of a master necromancer around our noontime table? Tales of glee and gameliness, of brothers-to-the-last skipping through the glades of Greenwood? Who’s son are you, Ada, to ensorcel your Nana so?! If my grandsire is so heartless, then let his withering stare ground my bones to cinder, but allow me the grace of my own consideration. The choice was mine to refuse!!” 

“Ioneth, you are out of turn,” Elrohir warned him. “No compliance will come from use of such a bold tongue.”

“Would I had other weapons,” Tathren snarked, his eyes a sheet of ice. “But my arsenal is spare. Tales of wickedness and deceit, of arrogance and power wielded but to shame. There is no Greenwood in my memory-chest, merely Mirkwood dank and dreary. Crazed as its crafty King, to whom I can bear no allegiance, though he be my grandsire in name.” 

“He would not name you grandchild,” came a solemn voice behind. Legolas turned, but would not broach the distance. “Nor of elfkind, my brave one. In his conception of rank and file, you are but a stone in his boot.”

“How can you know this?!” Tathren demanded. “You have not set him in your sights since afore the War!!”

As if gliding over the grass, Legolas stood beside his mate and met his angry son’s eyes with a cold countenance. Elrohir so wanted to curl both his husband and his son into a crushing, absolving embrace, but knew the hot-point of tension between them need be played out. With a look at Tathren’s adamant face, Elrohir feared the impending revelation as nothing else in all his millennia of life, for they had kept a most bruising matter from their dearest child as vigilantly as wolves from a babe’s basket. 

“You are mistaken, ioneth,” Legolas intoned evenly, each word brittle and chafing. “Even one as vile and colluding as you now count me thought that, after the War, my Adar might emerge anew from the lunatic King that ruled him. In your infancy, too enamored by your quicksilver sweetness, I returned to the Greenwood and sought him out. Mithbrethil stole me into our family keep, ostensibly to fetch some forgotten things, and again I stood to face my father. I begged him to see you, to know the child of his devising. No matter how loudly, how desperately I shrieked, railed, or bellowed through the throne room, he would not acknowledge me. I did not exist for him, I had not since my departure, years before. I told him of your beauty, of your agility even at such a tender age. Of your mischievous nature and how I adored you. What a gift he had wrought by his deceptions. I told him of your birth, my son, and the first moment I held you close. The King of Mirkwood acted no better than an infant, as if his youngest and once dearest son was… dead. Invisible. He nattered on endlessly to my brother, as if a wily spirit thundered about the place. I stood inches from his face and he ignored me. When he could not hold to decorum before his ministers, he fled, and I was precipitously banished from the realm of my birth.” Legolas ended his telling with a shudder, still unable to properly digest his Adar’s unfathomable behavior. “This is the sire you would bow to, my brave one? That deviant, cunning, ungrateful and barbarous heathen King? Who poisoned my wine and led me to an infidel’s bed, his own son?!”

“Now we have the truth of it,” Tathren egged him on. 

“*Legolas*,” Elrohir cautioned his husband against this course of reasoning, but the archer batted his benevolent hand away. 

“Who tainted the two most beloved to me with his wretched devilry?!” Legolas growled, rage igniting within. “As an afterthought to revenge, no less!! Who persecuted those who fought daily for the sanctity of a madman’s rule. Who chose your mother as he might chose a mare for his enemy’s stud, who sought a ruinous existence for a child not yet born to the world!! Who berated and scorned and bled me dry of love for him through his tyranny, and hatred, and the most base of self-indulgences!! Who sought-“ Legolas caught this last by biting his tongue through, never would this last blasphemy escape his lips. 

To his shock, Elrohir voiced it plain. “Who sought to murder his own grandchild, in his mother’s womb.” 

Tathren blanched, staggered back apace. 

“I left the Mirkwood to save you, nin pen-ind,” Legolas found the words again. “Not my people nor my birthplace. Three attempts were made on Neyanna’s life within a month of your begetting. Three more at Imladris, one even in the Golden Wood.” 

“But I am here,” Tathren whispered hoarsely, shaken to the core. “I am here…” 

“Valar be praised,” Legolas gave thanks again, as he had a million times throughout the years, that Elrohir was of such swift blade. 

“*Ada*,” he implored Elrohir, with eyes so wounded and bereft the elf-knight could barely stay himself back. “It cannot be.” 

“The assassin’s sable hair strung your first bow,” Elrohir confessed to him. “And every one since, to show your triumph. We sought only to protect you, ioneth.” 

“And deceive,” he spat back. 

“Nay, never that,” Elrohir insisted, reaching out a conciliatory hand. “Even in earliest years, you refused to hear his name blackened, by any elven tongue. You were so tenacious in regard he so undeserved, we nearly thought you spelled. To this very moment, your ire is misplaced.” 

“I would win his esteem,” Tathren bleated, unwilling to yield. “I am worthy.” 

“Too worthy,” Legolas seconded, his eyes resilient, but dewy nonetheless. “He is but a shriveled orc beside your glory, my brave one.” 

“He fashioned my very soul by his deceptions!!” Tathren suddenly bellowed, gulping back the sobs that threatened. “You fear I am his creature… I see the terror in your eyes.” 

When Elrohir caught him up in his arms, he wrenched himself away. He stumbled unsteadily back, before taking flight, heedless of his father’s anguished beckoning behind.

* * *

As he crept hours later through the musty stone entrance, an unfamiliar scent, like burnt molasses, welcomed him into the cave dwelling. 

Concealed by clumps of teeming moss and cascades of ivy beneath the rock-shelf to the east of their family compound, the glass forge was once the homely abode of their dwarf-friend Gimli, but, upon his recent passing, the small mine and ample hearth had been gifted to his apprentice, Echoriath. Only the telltale sign of smoke billowing from the tar-treated trunk atop the shelf told of the hollow core within, from which would emerge, often on cozy winter evenings, a darkling elf bearing a carefully buffered wheelbarrow full of the day’s creations: plates, goblets, window panes, candle holders, carafes, and shapely vases, each molded in some significant form for the destined recipient. For his one-and-thirtieth, Tathren himself had received a set of wind-chimes in pewter, porous coral, and blue glass for his new talan, the tenor of the notes they struck together reminiscent of a sea chantey. The chimes still hung by his bedroom window; he and Echo had woke to their sad song that very morn. 

It was the kindly heart of this elf he ran to, after hours of devastation and despair. 

The faint binds of fatigue that constricted his movement at the noontime meal were now, after hours of charging through the forest like a dragonslayer on the hunt, as leaden as shackles and chains around his sluggish frame. Though he was hardly clear-headed that morning, the whirligig reasoning of his run had exhausted him to resigned temperance; the thought of Echo’s consolation dragged him forward shuffle by groggy shuffle. When at last he slipped into the forge proper, the fugue-like heat of the invitingly furnished room kept him from announcing himself. Instead, he curled into a plump-cushioned basket chair and watched the master craftsman at work, with no little fascination. 

Though he had, on occasion, interrupted his cousin in the garden, in his greenhouse, or at his easel, he had only ever admired the result of this most dwarf-like of his skills. He had never witnessed any ply their hand at this elusive, mysterious art, not even Gimli. By stealing into the caves after such a tumultuous afternoon, Tathren had sought his cousin’s ear, but a little time’s observation taught him his lover also lingered near. His focus was easily lured away from his brimstone-laden musings towards the agile fashioning of eight slender-necked goblets, each blossoming upwards and fanning out like a small bouquet of willow leaves. Their color, a gray-green hew, was perfectly captured, their elegance implicit. How one of Tathren’s coarse archer’s hands could balance such a fragile cup with the requisite gentility of manner was unfathomable, though he didn’t for a moment doubt that they were meant for him. His unruly manner and impatient, ever-twitching fingers would certainly smash such delicate glasses before long, what indeed did Echoriath have in mind?

The answer flickered in his furthest recesses, but he was too distempered yet to give himself such recognition, not after his fractious display in the clearing. 

Instead, he focused on the young master’s method. Wielding his blow-rod like a combat-training staff, he swung the long metal bar around and stuck its end deep in the cauldron, which hung in the blazing hearth. The flames were so ferocious that they’d singed the plum of his cheeks violet-red, yet he wore no mask or scarf. Echoriath dredged up an amorphous mass of molten glass, enough to coat a generous quarter of the rod, then spun the drippings free. Alternating between a cutter and a blunt claw, he balanced the far end of the bar on his anvil, shaving off any further excess into a mighty rock trough that lined the front of the crucible hearth. The blob of glass had yet to take any shape, indeed was entirely too thick, even by Tathren’s untrained eye, until Echoriath deftly heaved up the rod and put the far, cold end to his lips. 

To his cousin’s utter shock, he sucked out a breath-full of ashen fumes, then blew, with nimble, practiced pressure, an oblong bubble through the glutinous glass-melt. After several more well-measured breaths and a few deft rolls to keep the coating even, he swiftly doffed a mitt wove with mithril twine, then, employing a twin-blade, milled the leaf-structure in as the glass became rigid. The timing of this vital maneuver was clocked with a hairsbreadth precision, as were the tiny details scored into the rapidly cooling surface with a pin. The resulting carafe, to compliment the goblets, he cut from the rod seconds later, simultaneously tossing the still smiting end into a bucket of solvent and sliding his creation over the anvil’s end. With a flat-headed hammer, he refined his edges, solidified the sides, and smoothed the cylinder into flawless shape. After some consideration, he added a groove for pouring and a handle from the still malleable scraps in the trough. 

When he raised the exquisite carafe before the fire to check for shadow-missed imperfections, Tathren was considerably awed, both by his talent and by his care. No elf or task accomplished by his darkling cousin received any less of his meticulous efforts, be it the earth he was seeding or an individual he attended. The thoroughness and sensitivity of his scrupulous nature, Tathren realized, was what had instinctively drawn him into the cave, into the warmth, the shelter of Echoriath’s berth. As he lazed back into the cushions of the basket chair, he noted how the hearth glow flattered his cousin’s baked skin, how his sweaty brow glistened in the firelight and how his amber eyes rippled as a golden sunset over the surface of a lake. 

After Echoriath shed his apron and turned away from the flames, long aware of his not-so-stealthy intrusion, his ombrous, haloed form padded slowly towards him, only the glint of his smile perceptible in the dim light of the cave. With the sleekness of a mountain cat, he eased onto his new lover’s lap, stroking their faces together and yearning to be petted. Tathren sighed fondly, as the darkling elf slipped further into arms, his sprightly, teasing tongue flicking at his ear lobe. Echo snickered, rather pleased with himself, then grew bold, ghosting his lips above his cousin’s and baiting him for a kiss. Seeking the solace only this - his tender one - could provide, Tathren slowly mated their mouths, the fume-hot depths of this moist cavity terrifically rousing. Caught up in the incredible sensation, suddenly so dearly needful of his rosy-hearted cousin’s affections, he delved, again and again, into their truly searing kiss. 

When Echo broke gently away, he groaned, but was soon appeased by the tracing of those bawdy lips down the slope of his neck, down his chest, pausing only to lift his shirt before singing a pert nipple. He did not remember teaching his dear one to worry and lave so effectively; though, at present, his weary mind could recall little other than sable, sensual, and painfully stiff, which he most emphatically was. As that peach of a tongue steamed a stirring path to his taut navel, Tathren struggled against the too-cloying fabric of his riding breeches. He realized then that they would couple there, before the roaring forge, on the edge of twilight, and, after the agony of his noontime heartache, he feverishly desired the bliss of their bodies’ union. 

Limber fingers found him, made quick business of his breech laces, though the resulting tremor at his baring reminded him of the relative inexperience of his tormentor. Tathren lifted his drooping lids and peered down at his lap, splayed as in dreamscapes with sheathes of ebony hair, just as Echo’s pink-swollen tongue essayed a first, timid taste of him. /How have I allowed this to progress so quickly?/ he dazedly wondered, moments before a ready grip clamped around the base of his engorgement and that curious tongue lapped the underside. 

Pleasure shot through him, fiendish, enrapturing, as a smirking mouth suckled his bulbous head. When skilled hands began to work him as knowingly as the metal rod, Tathren’s crystal eyes saw the most scarlet of reds. He could naught but moan, wanton and thrillingly unwound, as Echo’s hearth-fired tongue explored him; testing – like any discoverer worth his salt – a variety of licks, culls, and mind-melding swipes, until the skin of his erection tightened to a raw purple and he took him into the forge of his mouth. The scorching heat was as nothing Tathren had ever felt before. It took ever ounce of his honor not to buck into the smoldering deep of his throat, as the breach, though gorgeously sensuous, was yet shallow. Echoriath, caught in the moment’s thrall, sucked ravenously, without shame but with a daring ardor. As the pressure built in his loins, as the ecstasy of this purely loving act coursed through him, Tathren could naught but give in to the surge of boundless pleasure that engulfed him and release himself, with a shattering cry, into his beauteous lover’s too-talented mouth.

The young elf was a master blower of more things than mere glass. 

With a soft giggle and a giddy smile, Echo rested his flush cheek on the golden elf’s creamy thigh, savoring the tart taste on his tongue. 

“Better than a mouthful of soot,” he chuckled, then crawled up over his listless cousin and snuggled against him. 

“Damning with faint praise, I see,” Tathren taunted, letting his reverent eyes worship for him. “Shall I be equally severe?” 

The resulting blush was no surprise. “Did you…? W-Was it…to your liking?” 

“It was maddening, and lovely,” he assured him. “As your very self, lirimaer.” He glanced down to confirm his suspicions, that Echoriath had easily found completion, though untouched. The front of his breeches was dark and wet. “But how did you know…?” 

“It is not so dissimilar to blowing a vase or a carafe,” he considered. “Certainly more pleasing than glass fumes.” 

“No doubt,” Tathren nearly yawned. He tucked Echoriath closely to him, the last of his energy fading with the light outside. 

“I hope I have not spoiled you for the night’s revels,” Echo remarked playfully. “I seem to be quite eager to resume my tutelage.” His concern was pricked when Tathren did not immediately respond. “Meleth? Are you so wearied by one brief…?” 

“Nay,” he muttered, then continued on his own train. “Would that you were schooled enough to seize me utterly, throttle me with blighting pleasure and sunder me through to sleep’s sweet oblivion.” 

Echoriath was shrewd enough of character not to mistake this for reproach, as some green lovers might, but sign of his cousin’s needfulness of an altogether different sort. He carefully lowered the heavy head onto his shoulder and examined his solemn face. Tathren should still be luminous as Ithil’s panoply of stars from his release; instead, his countenance was wan and grave, his low-lit eyes murky as the brume. 

“What kept you from the oak-thicket, meleth?” Echoriath inquired gently. “We expected you readily after breaking fast, yet even after noontime you were absent.” 

“Ada-Las’ Naneth has returned from Mandos,” he informed him, without any grace or inflection of tone. 

“Truly?!” Echoriath exclaimed, but did not fail to note his lover’s solemn visage. “Such secrets you keep, nin ind.” 

“I imagine you are expected at table soonest,” he answered morosely, avoiding the more obvious response of joy at his grandmother’s return. This, too, did not go unmissed. “I will meet you after nightcaps, in my bedchamber.” 

Echoriath was too considerate a listener to bother asking why Tathren would absent himself from the meal. Instead, he focused his efforts on extracting the reason for this too-acute sobriety from the brittle elf in his arms. 

He would not let go until he had soothed him some. 

* * *

At the height of balmy midsummer, their garden was an enchanted place. Under the wash of Arien’s boldest rays, the hotbeds of goldenrods, marigolds, snapdragons, and lush greenery was offset by pebbles of obsidian and onyx on the pathways. Inscribed igneous pillars guarded the back gate. After sunset, under the gauzy veil of Ithil’s beams and the star-strewn firmament that courted her, the curlicue grass of the lawn cooled to dew-dappled indigo. The phosphorous moss patches were of iridescent blues and magentas. Traces of mercury made the black stones sparkle, this spectral luminescence lighting the path sufficiently to forgo the use of torches. With the yellow flowers somnambulant, the wisteria, crocuses, and hyacinths came alive, pale and immaculate in the moonlight. The willow boughs that spilled over the gates and the trillium vines that crept down the back of their two-tiered residence both reflected the ethereal lunar cast from their leaves and speckled the garden with enough looming shadow to create an atmosphere of preternatural elegance. 

From the ivy-webbed balcony of their bedchamber, Legolas looked out over this haunting nightscape, his somber eyes fixed on the two colossal, engraved sentries that stood aloft of the rear gate. After quitting the newly ponderous company of his Naneth to allow her some vital rest three hours earlier, he had begun his stoic vigil, though inwardly praying to the Lady herself for his son’s return, this night. The first in many an age – indeed, since before the child’s first majority – that the sun had set on a quarrel between them, those last being of incidental significance compared to the cyclone of their latest, injurious war of wills, the wind-spells of which had blasted through every subsequent conversation of the early afternoon and into late, late evening. Tathren’s display could not go unaccounted for, though he had hoped to spare his mother the worst, at least for a short, conciliatory time. 

A chill wind of silence had stilled Elrohir’s tongue through Legolas’ prolonged recounting to his snow-white mother - agape throughout – of his latter years in Mirkwood, the hellfire years of Thranduil’s tyrannical reign. Though he had longed to suck back every syllable lapsed from his whispering mouth, he had given her every truth of his heart and owed her nothing less: the manner of his betrothal, the forced circumstance of his first majority (the potential pain of which Elrohir staved off through no fault of the king’s), the troubled years after as he grew to discover the insidious corrosion of his ruler’s fractured alliances with other tribes, his collusion with Celeborn for the good of the people, his secreted binding, Thranduil’s insane objections, the discovery of his necessary deception, and the shameless tactics employed thereafter to beget their son. His disownment. His exile. No foul deed nor debasement had been further concealed, of Thranduil’s or of his own action. Only his brother’s faithful seconding of every charge had spoke in his favor; he had allowed his Naneth every chance to scorn him. For Legolas well knew of the passion that lingered still between Thranduil and his saintly wife, of how her goodly temperance, so violently stolen away, could yet be the remedy that restored his benevolent father to him. 

By the end of the tale, Laurelith had been overwhelmed with grief. 

It was then that Elrohir had said his piece. If Legolas had been the golden-maned sprite who told of their family’s blackest times, the elf-knight had been the dark angel who counted their uncommon blessings: the tragedy of his own house that spurned both regal fathers to bind their sons in the future’s hope, the respite of Legolas’ majority rites from his bloody honor-quest, his rescue in Corseth, their heady reunion, their blissful binding time, how their baby son’s promise kept their hearts alive through the War, and Legolas’s valor in every action therein. The peaceful years after. Their bucolic life here in Valinor. As he had listened, rapt, to every praiseful word with which his husband heralded him, guilt poured its bilious spew through his rigid veins. The moment when Tathren had ripped himself from Elrohir’s consoling arms played over and over before his glistening eyes, his head resounding with railing echo upon echo of Elrohir’s doubt about the begetting of another child. He had allowed their only son to witness what should have never even been born, their abject terror that Thranduil was the black star that cursed his birth. 

It appeared that Legolas himself, however, bore that violet mark on his brow, not their overbold child.

From within the splendorous forest dark, a nightingale sang out, lonesome and sweet. Many a sultry midsummer night had he lingered here, bothered and severe, while awaiting some tipple, some slight tune or distant melody of his adventuring son’s eager heart. Some sign he was hale, homeward-bound. With enough concentration, enough desperation, that familiar note - somber yet pure as the flow of a mountain spring, as once described to him - would murmur through the darkness, would touch the deep of him and tell him Tathren yet lived. 

That afternoon, Elrohir had assured his mother of the hope they both had shared for the future with the news of their son’s conception, but his husband had been the beacon of that hope between them and he the rocks that threatened sundering below. Ever had his fears of loosing his most precious one reared the ugliest aspect of his warrior’s soul, the unquestioning ardor with which he instinctively protected his family from any appearance of harm. Perhaps Tathren had reason to desire an audience with his grandsire, perhaps his father had miraculously transformed these last hundred and fifty years, in his children’s absence and his kingdom’s slow decline. Legolas could not keep his thoughts from immediately turning to the dire potential of such a scenario, one he was not sure either he, or more pointedly Elrohir, could survive. If the price was a few nights torment, with only the courtly nightingale for company, so be it. He would sacrifice an army of phantom potentials for the child they already loved; so very dearly, though he himself might doubt the claim. 

With a halting sigh, Legolas reeled in wandering eyes, sought out Earendil above.

Slender white arms suddenly wove around him, a sarong-clad form pressed warm to his back. He sensed the vapors of Elrohir’s gentle breath, as they wisped over the back of his neck, down his spine. When he tensed, unintentionally, yet shame-struck, hands smoothed over his chest, meeting and resting over his heart. 

“I regret he will not come tonight, my brave one,” Elrohir murmured into his shoulder. “He earlier sought out his cousin’s succor and will rest with him.” 

“How do you know this?” Legolas asked, somewhat relieved. 

“Elladan sent word,” he softly explained. “They took some supper from the larder, then stole away to Echoriath’s rooms. He assured Elladan that he would be the one to sleep on skins by the fire.” 

“Tathren will never allow it,” Legolas mused, though his throat clenched with sadness. “He is too chivalrous to take the bed, while Echoriath tosses below.” 

“A son as gallant as his fair father,” Elrohir cooed to him, tightening his hold on his beleaguered mate. “Who would have thought?” 

“He has always shown strong signs of your kindly influence,” Legolas remarked stiffly. “Earendil shone bright, the day you first blessed me with your blithe regard.” 

“And yours is rot and spindly?” Elrohir retorted, though with sugar enough to sweeten him. He turned his reluctant husband to face him, eyes alight with concern. “Come now, Legolas. You are ever too spare in your self-praise, melethron. For one of such relentless force in battle, your are too easily wounded in affairs of the heart.” 

“I shun our child’s succor, blindly force him away, and still you come to comfort me,” Legolas rasped, his face grown sallow as sour cream. “To speak of wounded, Elrohir… you yourself are victim to my all-raising will. T’were not my arms he tore from, yet twas I from whom he fled. With one swipe of my broadsword, I bloodied us both. Forgive me, nin ind…”

“Seek your absolution elsewhere, maltaren-nin,” Elrohir whispered against his cheek. “You have done me no wrong.” The elf-knight sealed this pledge with a chaste, but heartfelt, kiss, the thought of passion between them in this watershed moment too vulgar to contemplate. “Now come along, meleth. This tempest-day has wearied you raw and I would succor *your* trampled heart. A replenishing bath awaits in our bedchamber, some fresh-laundered sheets, the quiescence of my loving arms to berth you…”

“Temptation itself,” Legolas sighed again, burrowing his face in the silken sheathes of hair that graced the length of his darkling husband’s collar. “How did I come to win such a comely mate? So selfless, so true in his regard?” 

“The mysteries of our fair Lady are not mine to illuminate,” Elrohir smiled becomingly, then gently pulled him towards the door to their bedchamber. “Come, melethron. A red dawn may break on the morrow, but the night is soft and temperate. Best seek sanctuary, while you may, in the tenderness of your bonded’s embrace. For I have vowed to love you, Legolas, be the sky fair, clouded, or shadow black, and I am an elf of honor.”

“Peerless honor, melethron-nin,” Legolas wholeheartedly agreed, as he allowed himself to be drawn inside. 

 

End of Part Five


	6. Part 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What’s worse than a stubborn elf? A pair of them.

Part Six

With a grunt of frustration, Echoriath dashed ink over the sketch before him and jabbed his quill into its sponge. The dim light of the candle was amply sufficient for his needs, but his filmy eyes could no longer focus on the tea-tinted parchment. The failure to deliver this latest innovation to the woodcarvers they’d commissioned for their furnishings would further delay the readiness of their apartments, what with construction churning on at a furious pace, yet with one glance at the cornsilk strands splayed across the pillows of his nearby bed, Echoriath could not bring himself to regret this. Though his eyes were scratched red and burned with overuse, the mere sight of Tathren burrowed under his covers for the fifth night in a row was enough to wet them with joy. 

Upon his return from a last, unsupervised audience with his grandmother, who sailed for Laurelin at dawn, Tathren had been deathly silent. Echoriath had longly sat, curled with him by the fire, sipping tea but unspeaking. These last, precious nights, the golden elf had found twin comforts in Echoriath’s arms, both the implicit tenderness of a faithful lover and the unwavering support of a friend. Tathren’s troubles could not entirely quench his fever for the young elf, nor delay Echoriath’s quest for bed-learning; indeed, the solace he sought in their joining naturally deepened the feeling between them. Their coupling became more sensuous, more heartfelt, Tathren all-too-needful of Echoriath’s skillful nurturing. His strident cousin may be well-versed in the act of love, but the darkling elf had mastered the selfless care of a loved one. As a result, Echoriath had experienced nearly a week of unparalleled regard, admired for his proficiency at the building site, for his sustaining company in the evening, and for his keen willingness at night. 

Their routine was so gratifying, that part of him guiltily wished Tathren might never reconcile with his fathers. 

This slight blasphemy might have tempted further exploitation, if Tathren were not so visibly bereft at their estrangement. This recent episode had been the blackest yet. Earlier by the fire, Echoriath had been gathered to him with the sanctity of an immaculate, not even his most delicate, anxious sighs had wrought a word from the listless elf. Unbeknownst to his desolate cousin, the darkling elf had slipped a light draught in his tea; with a precipitous yawn, he now considered that perhaps he’d drugged the wrong cup. Nevertheless, Tathren had soon been slumped against him, his tea almost spilt when his hand finally, gladly, went limp. Their lurching journey to the bed was best swiftly forgotten, though his cousin’s knee might smart some come morn. There had simply been too many limbs to account for. 

Quitting his easel and blowing the candle out, Echoriath tugged off his night shirt, as he ambled over to their bed. He wondered if he should doff his leggings, as well, or might the mere sensation of bareness against him cause Tathren to rouse too early the coming morn? So many simple, overlooked details to togetherness eluded him still, reminded him of how much further teaching he required. Luckily, Tathren’s problems had hidden any impropriety, where his own fathers’ attentions were concerned, to their sharing living quarters and his prolonged attachment to his cousin, as well as provided an easy excuse as to why he might, in the future, absent himself for a string of consecutive nights, without the notion of an unknown lover being ventured for their protection. He was little at ease with such deceptions, especially towards his own too-blithe fathers, but would willingly pay the price, when the time did come, for Tathren’s worthy affection. 

With every passing night, Echoriath’s hope grew that this bliss might come to last his lifetime long. 

Seconds beneath the covers quickly told him that the leggings were too cloying, after all. He had become accustomed to the caress of the sheets, to Tathren’s silky skin, to his wealth of ‘jewelry’ spread unbound across his thigh. Restriction of many kinds had begun to chafe him, especially the elastic tug of the hose. With the stealthiest of maneuvering, he swam through the sheets without a superfluous rustle, brushed a space of pillow free of golden hair, and twined their lank limbs gently together. Only when he lay his own woozy head down and turned to ghost a kiss over his lover’s lips, did his bronze eyes meet the glistening gaze that sought him. The pain that winced those fair features, that constricted the pale throat and blanched those angular cheeks, seized him such that his groggy senses instantly woke. 

“*Echo*,” Tathren rasped coarsely. He clenched his teeth, fought to bite back a sob, but the effort only forced out his tears. Echoriath wrapped him in secure, unshakable arms, the gush of his dear cousin’s sorrow wetting his own neck, streaming down his chest. “…forgive me, I…” 

“Hush, meleth-nin,” he cooed to him. “They have not forsaken you. I daresay their misery may be more vicious than your very own.” 

“It is their fear that keeps them away,” Tathren retorted, as he struggled to steady his breaths. “I repulse them.” 

“You challenge them,” he amended, his tenacious arms never failing. “Provoke them, cause them to re-examine decisions made in a different, more ominous time. Perhaps they do not come to you because they themselves are not reconciled to a certain course of action. Perhaps they cannot give you the permission you seek, so they await the… the tempering of your rage. For you raged, tathrelasse, by your own admission.” 

“I am no longer angry,” he admitted, but could not yet ebb the flow of his tears. “Merely… I feel… I feel… abandoned. Shunned, like an unsightly thing…forever alone.” 

“Who, then, embraces you now,” Echoriath whispered bashfully. “If you are so alone?” 

With a whimper of regret, Tathren melded himself to him, not a speck of space allowed between them. 

“Swear to me, nin bellas,” he begged him. “Swear that though our lust may one day be slaked and our bodies eternally sated… swear that you will always count me dear, as heart’s brother if no longer as lover. As friend as well as cousin by affinity’s sake.” 

“I swear, meleth,” he vowed solemnly, and much more besides to his own heart. “If you, in turn, will think on all the milliard ways your fathers have shown their love, not kept it back, as well as all the burdens they bore to see you safely grown.” 

Tathren sighed, then, so long and deep Echoriath thought he’d spent his entire lungs’ breath.

“I swear,” he exhaled softly. 

He coughed out the last of his sadness in Echoriath’s vigilant, ever-yielding arms, then let himself be sweetly kissed to sleep. 

*********************************

The magic was not in the constant flame of the lantern nor the sheer sweep of the diaphanous curtain, not in the hushly rasped words of the tale nor the dance of long, elegant fingers through the static air. The trick of it was simple enough: the dim of night, the lateness of the hour, the play of shadow and firelight across a humble sheet. That the storyteller had survived the events he now depicted held little import to the elfling that hung on every syllable that hissed from his lips, every creature that crept and leapt, by the cast of his nimble archer’s hands, across the tarp that kept his cot shroud from the rest of the patients’ quarters. 

Arms raised up in a gesture quivering with might, thumbs jutting downward long and clean as a sword in the shadow behind, Legolas held Ivrin’s saucer eyes in rapt suspense. 

“On but a slip of shale stone the wizard stood,” he intoned ominously. “The bridge of Khazad-dum. He lifted his longstaff, but a modest stick of ederwood, up into the brimstone face of the fiery Balrog of Moria, and bellowed as fiercely as the thunder rages… ‘The dark fire will not avail you, flame of Udun. Go back to the Shadow! You. Cannot. Pass!!’ Then, with a deftness and agility none would account him for, he stabbed the rod into the very rock of the bridge and the entire mountain began to quake…”

As Legolas twined his fingers into the horned illusion of the Balrog, Erestor let his shrewd eyes flicker over Elrohir, at his side. While certainly not as enthralled as the tiny elfling on the cot, the darkling elf’s eyes shone with bedazzlement of a different hue, the unblemished aura of a lover’s affection. Both elves continued to prove themselves rather brave-faced before adversity. After the agonizing events of the last week, none would have expected them to so willfully and graciously play nursemaid to Ivrin this two-night, during Erestor’s brief but necessary absence from Telperion, but Elrohir had himself volunteered the service and Legolas had gladly accompanied him. Indeed, upon Erestor’s return just minutes before, he’d been astonished to discover Legolas in the thick of the first act of his thrilling tale, as Elrohir cleaned the examination table of tools, leftover herbs from the wrap, and old dressing shards. Both elves had eventually found themselves drawn towards the cot, as Legolas was a premiere raconteur, though they lingered far enough not to break his genially conjured spell over the little awed one. 

Once the legendary Balrog was smote by the equally hallowed Gandalf Grayhelm, Elrohir clutched his arm with a chaste grip and nodded towards the healer’s study. The two elves swept away with nary a rustle of their billowing robes; once enclosed within, Erestor offered him a seat by the glowing hearth. As he stoked the crackling logs, he again observed, with necessary stealth, the comely elf-knight, who gathered himself into his armchair as if any loose limb might be lost to swift and merciless amputation. The serene face that had regarded his mate so reverently was pinched, uncommonly anxious, though Erestor doubted anxiety truly so uncommon to one currently estranged from his only son. Not since his days of questing had Elrohir sought a healer’s counsel from him, but by his strange, perplexed manner, twas not a Loremaster’s encyclopedic mind he would question forthwith. Disturbed by this sudden, though for the moment hidden, illness in one so fine and dear, Erestor quickly settled himself in the armchair’s twin and regarded his former charge with compassion. 

“What troubles you, meldir?” Erestor cut to the quick. The darkling elf may ever be diplomatic in other relations, but he rarely countenanced aught but blunt honesty between them. “Even the bloom of your pinkish cheeks seems sallowed, when away from your luminous husband.” 

“In truth, I…” he began, then just as quickly halted. With a cavernous sigh, he wrenched his eyes away, their cold silver light finding solace in the hot gold of the flames. 

Erestor smiled generously at the reluctant elf, then rose to find his kettle. He spruced the fresh water with chamomile, lemon, honey, and a dash of athelas, suspended the iron pot from a winch in the brick dome of the hearth, and silently fetched two fat-bellied clay cups from a desk drawer. Elrohir’s argent stare never left the spitting fire, as he ruminated over facts, impressions, methods of explanation where nonsense reigned. Just as the first, steaming gush of tea was poured into his waiting cup, so the first rush of excuses tripped from his well-gnawed lips. 

“You will think it nothing odd,” the still hesitant elf-knight dove in. “As did I, in the earliest days. A time of contentment, anticipating our son’s return. Our spirits sparked by his nearness, by his impending advent. Then he was returned, and was it not natural that we rejoice, as parents, as… lovers, in the feelings his brilliance and triumph wrought? It seemed so, to me, at first, but then time sped on and the routine settled in and yet still… still. Then Legolas broached the one subject I’d been avoiding all this while, in the embers of our passion no less, and I could deny it no longer, mellon-nin… It consumed me.” 

“Forgive my ignorance, my brave one,” Erestor urged him to elucidate. “But of what particular ailment do you speak with such… what exactly has beset you, Elrohir?”

Elrohir sighed again, this last rather Elrondian in breadth, then pressed on. “I know not. I would not have even thought to consult you, but… the fever shames me so.” 

“You have felt feverish?” Erestor pondered, still somewhat confused. “Are there chills, as well?” 

“Nay, I do not fade, Erestor,” he snapped, then schooled himself. He twisted his fingers together, as if to clamp them still, then laid the resulting double-breasted fist in his lap. “Your pardon, meldir…” 

“Please, go on,” the healer insisted, his concern mounting with every delay. “What other symptoms have expressed themselves?”

“Swelling,” he whispered, as timidly as Echoriath might. “Rawness. Chafing…”

“Might I examine this tender area?” he asked gently. The resulting glare, halfway between horror and repulsion, gave him his unwavering answer. “Gwador, you must be more precise in your description, if I am to allay this… this distressing…?” 

With a curt nod, Elrohir shut his eyes. They found the blue of the flames again, before they began a far different tale from the sprawling adventure still booming from the main hall. 

“For over a month,” he recounted tersely. “I have been what can only be described as… insatiable. I long, with a fervor unknown in my ample years of marriage, unmatched in my youthful adventuring, and more ardent than even the honey-time after my binding, for the most relentless intimacy with my husband. For a time, I thought this merely another crest in the waves of desire that flow through an elf-couple’s eternity together. I held no worries at all, as we both quite relished stealing extra moments during our daily chores to love. Though these soon became even more frequent, we were both quite giddy, quite besotted, and I thought little of other than reaping the benefits of my husband’s intense regard. In truth, I began to suspect all was not well with me but last week, when on a night of particularly involved coupling Legolas, exhausted past proper endurance, fell fast asleep and I… I wanted him again. Since that moment, I have not been able to stop, not even for the sparest slip of time, desiring his constant attention. Physical attention.” He paused. His cheeks were burnt scarlet from this heated confession, but, despite gut-knotting shame, he dug into the meat of the matter. “I am an elf of reason, as you well know, of measure and of meaning… yet I must force my mind, again and again, to attend to whatever action I am currently performing. I am hopelessly distracted from my duties with the Council, I have not accomplished a task in weeks that did not require double the allotted time, every mention of Legolas causes…” Erestor had not thought it possible for him to blush deeper. “During our family crisis, these days past, my husband has required the care of his beloved, not his lover, of his chosen partner and life-mate. I have coddled him the best I could, but never was the need to ravage him far gone. My tender husband, so abashed, so pained, and I looked upon him as a lecher would!! It is unyielding and ferocious, Erestor, this… this terrible lust!!”

Rather than be amused by this unsightly matter, Erestor grew severe. “This swelling you spoke of… where is it located?” 

“My…my seed-sacs,” he admitted, his cheeks biting-red. 

“Elsewhere?” 

“Nay,” he stated, his throat clenched. “Unless I prove to be…”

“Aroused,” Erestor stated, with a clinician’s distance. “Forgive me, meldir, but I must inquire further. Do you recover with… shocking swiftness, from your release?” 

“*Shocking*,” Elrohir confirmed, bearing the brunt of his questions with considerable poise. 

For a short while, Erestor grew pensive. He poured the darkling elf another cup of the remedial tea, motioned for him to drink. He had immediately known what mischievous quirk of elven constitution had provoked the ‘fever’ Elrohir had described, the delicacy was in explicating its cause to one who may, in his inimitably decisive manner, bear considerable resistance to the suggestion. On the night of Ivrin’s gutting procedure, the insomniac Loremaster had overheard, from the cot he’d shared with Haldir, Elrohir’s impassioned self-defense regarding the debate that had concerned he and his mate long before Laurelith’s return from Mandos. Elrohir, nor his Lord Elrond, had not confided any further developments to him, but Erestor had little doubt the matter was not yet settled between Legolas and himself. 

The unfortunate, all-too-physical consequences of his indecision had come to so terribly afflict him. 

“Your courage in coming forth is commendable,” Erestor complimented him. “In my own time of intemperance, too recently past, I had not presence enough to query even Elrond’s counsel.” 

“You, gwador, have been similarly beset?” Elrohir queried breathlessly, his relief palpable. 

“Aye, two autumns past,” he recounted. “Both Haldir and I, myself, were quite acutely piqued by a most desperate thirst. The greater the frequency with which we lay together, the deeper the well of our need was trenched. We suspected all manner of madness, bedevilment, or skullduggery, but the remedy proved… rather wondrous.” 

“But the reason, meldir,” Elrohir pressed him. “What was the cause? The resolution?” 

“Be warned,” Erestor cautioned him, with keen eyes. “The results of my subsequent research may unnerve you… anger you, even.” 

“Yet I must be told,” Elrohir insisted. “This torment must end! My dearest, my peerless husband -” 

Elrohir heard the urgency in his own voice and sucked back a long draught of air. Between his necessary self-repression and the anguished events of the week passed, his patience was wore threadbare. Sage Erestor, however, held the knowledge he required to smother his too-potent desire and to succor his near-grieving mate. He blew the last of his agitation out between pursed lips, then folded himself back into attentiveness. 

When steady mithril eyes met his own, Erestor proceeded to inform him. 

“When an ellyth and an ellon are bound in love,” he educated him. “Their soul flames are joined, paired in flesh and linked in spirit. Though the love-act consummates this bond, the only true melding of their fea, as one soul, is in the conception of a child. Many ellyn, however, choose to delay this natural progression of their union, some forever, some merely for a time. If the couple tarry too long, one, or both, of the bonded may be overcome with the need to beget children, even unconsciously so. Spurred by the feelings shared with their beloved, this desire eventually manifests itself physically. In the bodily expression of your love.” 

After a precipitous gasp, Elrohir became statuesque in his stillness. 

“But,” he objected, with tremulous calm. “What of ellon bound to ellon?” 

“Bindings of same gender,” Erestor continued. “Are similarly subject. The effects are often prolonged and doubly painful, as there is no quick method of resolution, no chance of conception within the bonded pair. Over years of time, if unreconciled, the need will become more bearable, then diminish, then disappear altogether. There is a tonic to allay the symptoms some, though there is a more ready alternative…” 

“A child begotten with another,” Elrohir grumbled at the serendipity of it all. He snorted as fitfully as a soot-snouted dragon, his muddled mouth set firm. “How timely.” 

“Indeed,” Erestor murmured, letting him mull over the wearying circumstance. 

“Would that my waterlogged head,” he mused finally. “My capsizing heart be as easily resolved as my wave-tossed flesh and my frothing loins.” Erestor hiccupped a laugh, despite himself, which had the effect of putting the goaded elf somewhat at ease. He laughed himself, sharp and salty, then raised an inquiring brow. “Did you not mention that your own binding pact was once plagued by such brooding? By what method did you successfully overcome your need?” 

With a bashful smile, Erestor admitted: “By giving in.” At Elrohir’s astonishment, he finally revealed his long-gestating joy to one outside his marriage bed. “I was not alone in my hot-headed folly, that autumn. Haldir also was aflame. By the first flakes of winter, we would abandon our cares to couple nearly the day long, such was our need to make our mated soul-fires material. At that time, if you recall, my sister Elerrina returned from Arda. Hers is a lonely tale. Two millennia my elder, she had the misfortune of begetting three sons before her chosen mate would bind to her. An unseemly elf, he abandoned her after their third child was born, to raise my nephews alone. But fortune would not yet favor her. All three evidenced their sire’s taciturn nature, were slain in battle and linger at Mandos still.”

“Yet of late she is quite courtly, for one so tragic,” Elrohir remarked, well-remembering the gentle and goodly elf he had had many a celebrant occasion to converse with. 

“After centuries of grief, her fortunes turned at last,” Erestor proudly recounted. “A chance meeting, at Imladris, with Haldir’s fair cousin Alqualir. They have not hence parted company. Indeed, there was talk of betrothal, when last we spoke.”

“I am glad of it,” Elrohir dared a smile, though was not confused away from his inquiry by this digression. “But you skirt the issue at hand, Loremaster.” 

“In a way,” Erestor considered enigmatically. “When we were in the fever’s thick and desperately searching for one to bear our child, my kindly sister offered a gesture of such heartrending generosity, I have yet to properly digest its impact upon me. After some deliberation, and no little consideration, she lay with my Haldir and begot our first babe last summer. A son. Orinath. I hastened to his birthing, yestereve, at the ancient seaside town below Taniquetil, where Elerrina and Alqualir reside, with my Adar.” 

“A wily one, you are, to so conceal your joy!!” Elrohir exclaimed, rising to embrace him. 

Both the shout and Ivrin’s succumbing to long-lurking slumber brought an inquiring Legolas through the door. “Elrohir? Are you well, meleth?” 

“Fetch your broadsword, maltaren-nin,” he taunted mirthfully. “We have, in our midst, a purveyor of mysterious and colluding inveiglement.” 

“How now?” Legolas queried, with feigned concern. 

“Truly, meldir,” Erestor flushed, rattled by his teasing. “One hardly speaks of such things.” 

“A son born of your bonded’s siring *night last*, Erestor,” Elrohir playfully accused him. “How long did you think to keep such glorious news?”

“Until the summer’s fading,” he confessed. “When both he and his sister will come home.” 

“His sister?!” Legolas interjected. “I fear we may have to summon our Lord and Adar Elrond, if you do not loose your watchful tongue.” 

With a flustered grunt, Erestor explained: “Our daughter… *my* daughter… will come in springtime. Alqualir is but newly plump with her. Both she and Elerrina will reside in our compound, amidst the soothing elms, soon as Echoriath and his builders can complete the commission. They share our long-vowed purpose in coming overseas, to found a school here in Telperion, where children of both new-founded elven realms can flourish in a safe environment. Children such as Ivrin and his sisters.” With a mightily contented sigh, he turned pensive. “*Our* children, and many more.” 

Erestor did not fail to mark the shadow that then shroud Legolas’ congratulatory face. A cry from the hall beyond saved him from the poignant moment, from his husband’s steadying touch. 

“Such happy news, Erestor,” he well-wished his friend, before escaping. “By Elbereth’s bounty, I know them blessed.” Fleet-footed, he sped away; back to the too-heartening need of the sickly elfling. 

When Legolas was gone, the Loremaster grew sober. “You must speak with him, mellon-nin. Tell him of the trials you weather, find succor and strength in your bond-mate’s consolation.” 

“He is too raw from Tathren’s scolding,” Elrohir shook his head. “My plight will only burden him further. And if I… if I choose to suffer on, until the fever abates… if I cannot grant him the second child he so longs for… He will never forgive me for denying my body’s need.” 

“In elfkind, the flesh is but a physical manifestation of our hotspring fea,” Erestor advised him. “From this eternal flame emanates each and every one of our cares, our burdens, and our unspeakable desires. Perhaps in voicing your troubles to your valiant husband, you will at last resolve yourself.” 

After some reflection, Elrohir asked: “Were you resolved, meldir, by your daughter’s begetting?” 

“Gloriously resolved,” Erestor beamed, then heartily embraced his longtime friend.

**************************************

In the gloaming onset of twilight, two sprightly elves waved a hearty farewell to their friends at the forking path and trod down the road less traveled. Merrily they trampled through the dew-slick grass, their muscles lank from the trials of construction, but their spirits airy-light. Though their challenging task was the most all-consuming effort either had undertaken in their short lives, they daily reaped the spoils: of brotherhood with the exploring party, of togetherness between the three cousins, of confidence from the esteemed members of the High Council. 

Already further commissions were being floated under their too-keen noses, the most savory of which was a three-month trek and five season-cycle stay at the site for a potential eastern colony. The susurrations of shared gossip between Thorontir and loose-lipped Erechtilon, one of the council elders, upon the latter’s noontime visit, had reached the leaf-shaped ears of one Tathren Legolasion, who hastened to impart his ill-begotten knowledge to their newly-renown architect and master builder. 

Who had, all-too-typically, flushed with amazement. 

As they wove their way through the trees, speckles of the roseate sunset glinted between the meshed boughs, which dappled a path of amber, ochre, and vermilion before them. Without the hawkish eyes and wagging tongues of the builders to temper their oft too-evident regard, the blonde elf snuck a stealthy hand around the slender waist of his companion and tucked him under his arm, relishing the pressure of that weary body against him, the head that lolled onto his shoulder and the twin hold that anchored him in. Lured in by the crisp, seaside scent of that sensuous ebony hair, he rested his cheek against the darkling elf’s crown and drank him in like a connoisseur. Secure in the knowing that none among their kin followed this longer, more scenic route from river glade to high-borne talans, they meandered contentedly about, luxuriating, even, in the other’s easy affection. 

Echoriath was particularly grateful to bask, if only for a brief while, in Tathren’s doting attentions, as the lion’s share of their downtime had lately been spent either in coupling or in his consolation. Yet the specter of another raw night did loom among the forest hollows; their lazy way led not to the willow thicket, but again to his fathers’ house. He expelled these black thoughts from his too-dizzy head, when Tathren halted their progression and caught him up close. The effortlessness of the smile that graced his cousin’s noble features made him even more loathe to take up the matter now. He rested their brows together, then spryly rubbed their noses as in the legendary, chaste kisses of the Immaculates of Lake Helevorn. 

“Tell me truly, sweet one,” Tathren whispered. “Here in the forest shroud. Does my loving please you?” At Echoriath’s fearful gasp, his eyes tippled with mirth. “I do not mean to stave off our relations, my dear one, nor that I have not marked your passionate response, I merely… You are often too shy to voice your own suggestions, too eager in learning to question what you are taught, so I thought to open, as it were, the matter for some discussion. We are perhaps too newly coupled to consider improvisation, or some of the more… advanced techniques, but your desires are, I believe, mature enough to know when improvement is required.” When Echoriath’s comments was not forthcoming, Tathren found he could not keep from blushing. “You are oftentimes so quiet, in completion’s wake… I simply wish to learn what pleasures you like best, and if there are some that might… in truth, I know not what you favor. Do they bear up to your imaginings? Less ardor? More lingering? Am I too coarse, at times, or too meek…?” When the young builder felt his cousin’s shoulders tense, he stole a kiss away. This, however, only served to aggravate him. “Valar, Echo, will you not answer me?” 

“There is naught that specifically comes to mind,” he sighed, then kissed him more fully. “Nor has any act of our coupling aught but enraptured me. Are there moments when you doubt my… my interest?” 

“Never,” Tathren conceded. “I merely seek guidance, in your tutelage. I would that you be thoroughly versed in the acts that most thrall you.” 

“But *every* act you have so generously learned me has held my too sensate flesh in raging, blissful thrall!!” he giggled. To his relief, Tathren echoed his bemusement. “Truly, meleth, how am I to favor one act over another, when each succeeding embedment soars to heights of ecstasy I have never known before?” 

Tathren snorted with affected exasperation, then mused: “I kindly inquire after your preferences, and you mock me! Imp!” Despite his rather forced haughtiness, he recklessly fondled Echoriath’s ripe backside. 

Echo stifled a groan and murmured to him: “My language may be somewhat overwrought, but my meaning is pure, maltaren-nin.” He pecked Tathren on the tip of his aquiline nose, then honestly considered the question at hand. “I do have, upon reflection, two requests.” 

“And these are?” Tathren queried, regarding him with such fondness and warmth that Echoriath’s hesitation was instantly banished. 

“Firstly,” he began bashfully. “The orchard is parched from our sultry summer, and I must delay our progress with the apartments a day or two in order to attend the fruit trees. I will again perform the ritual which you so… so vividly interrupted, not yet a fortnight ago. After my communion with the trees I am often quite… tender. Sensitized to every drop of rain on my skin, every touch that might graze…” 

With a wolfish grin, Tathren anticipated his request: “You would that I take you, immediately after. Under the peach tree, perhaps?” 

“Might… might this be amenable to you?” he timidly inquired, his color irresistibly rising. 

“Amenable?” his cousin teased, delighted. “Aye, somewhat.” With a laugh, he plucked a saucy kiss from his timorous one’s plump, red mouth. “What else, beauty?” 

Echoriath’s lush face turned melancholy, yet his golden eyes full as a glowing harvest moon. His dark cousin’s hold tightened almost imperceptibly, his arms solid, unyielding around him. 

“I swore to Ada-Dan I would dine at table this eve,” he told him. After a halting instant, he begged: “Come with me.” 

Tathren tried to pull away, but Echoriath held fast; one look at the implacable, yet compassionate eyes told him it was the vigilant lover of nights past, not a lamb-pelted heathen, who kept him close. 

“This wish I cannot grant,” he replied apologetically. “Forgive me, lirimaer. I know how our quarrel disheartens you, but-“

“Grandsire will attend,” Echoriath tried again, fluttering pliant lips over his rigid jawline. “Grandmother, as well. Your absence will be keenly felt, tathrelasse. None is allowed to take your seat. It is left empty, as if awaiting your return. Your fathers would be overjoyed by your attendance, they would not bother you… they may not even address you directly. The thought of their faces…” 

With a forlorn sigh, Tathren remained immovable. “I cannot.” 

To his surprise, Echoriath bowed his head, as if in shame. “Why do you seek a tyrant’s favor over your gracious fathers’ regard? The approval of such a vile, selfish, ridiculous elf? I have been loved, this past week, by one of such blithe worthiness, such tenderness, strength, and skill… *why* does such an elf need a murderer’s blessing to count himself hale? To realize the greatness of which we all know him possessed? Can one as shy and humble as I be granted an explanation? For I have known the elf in question most intimately, and though he has my sustenance in every venture, I cannot, as you say, countenance this valorous folly of his.” 

“To prove that I am alive,” Tathren croaked, too affected by his words. “That though he tenfold plotted my ruin and took every chance to smite my growing, I am here. I survive, whole and hale. I live on, despite him. To spite him.” 

“And give you no care to the price of this meeting?” Echoriath continued soberly. “The heartache your Adar suffer, now and ever, at your estrangement from them? Do you no longer care for their loving?” 

“I must know who I am,” Tathren insisted softly. 

“You are their son!!” Echoriath exclaimed, gripping his arms with urgency, with breathless emotion. “You are my heart’s brother, my lover. You are beautiful and mischievous and strong and terribly stubborn… and you are breaking your Adar’s heart with this madness. They have fought so longly for you, Tathren, to protect you from Thranduil, from Mordor’s choking claw. They battled for centuries against the most wretched vermin to score Middle-Earth, to beg the chance not for your life or mine, but the lives of the peoples of Arda entire. For the land that birthed them, for wintering elfkind and nascent man alike. Can you not understand what it means to fight for the lives of all you hold dear, only to discover that the one you wanted most to protect cares not for that protection? Indeed, that this innocent would race to the very devil that most reviled him and beg his favor?”

“You were wanted,” Tathren countered morosely. “Born by your Adar’s purposeful choice, so rich in love that your very eyes bear the color of it!!” He tempered his ragged culls of breath, seeking not to accuse his simple-hearted cousin, but to illuminate him. “My Ada-Las has been… a prince among fathers, but ever the burden of my begetting weighs upon him. Over and again, I hear his heart plead that such a mendacious event had not come to pass, that...” 

“Surely you do not believe that Ada-Las wishes you were never born, Tathren!!” Echoriath retorted sharply. The resulting desolation that paled his golden cousin’s face struck hard upon him. “Forgive me, meleth, but… but that is inconceivable! How can one so valorous, so ferocious as Ada-Las be aught but quaking with fury that the begetting of his beautiful and loving child has been so blighted, that this child of his making be deprived of his grandsire, once a loving father, now a vengeful scoundrel? He would be the first to welcome Thranduil, should he repent his actions, but that is not to be. Can you not see? He was prepared to give his life for you, in the War. Anything, for you to be safe. He would have gladly stayed eternity in Mandos, forgoing your love, forsaking his very beloved. He would bear even your most injurious scorn for this, for your safe keeping. For your life, meleth-nin.” 

This litany of irrefutable logic, a first against him from Echo’s knowing, patient soul, struck him to the core. Tathren shut his brimming eyes, swallowed back a cutting self-reproach, a curse. The thought of the shameful consequences of his impulsiveness – the silence between he and his fathers, their estrangement - scalded his cheeks scarlet. As constant, balming arms enveloped him, his skin burnt off the last of its rage, sweat away the last of his despair; in its place came humility, temperance, and a sickening regret. 

As Tathren sank further into the vigilant embrace of this, his most precious and astonishing of admirers, Echoriath allowed himself a grateful smile. 

“I would be honored to join you at table, tonight,” his cousin rasped into the soft of his neck. 

***

As their extended family gathered in the resplendent dining hall, their amiable chatter was too low-toned to vault across the high buttresses of the ceiling, to the oval window where Legolas loomed. He again thought to excuse himself, but, meeting Elrohir’s worried glance through the flickering candelabra, he masked his melancholy behind poised resignation and prayed Celebrian would not wax nostalgic this most trying night of all. 

Turning his mind to the menu of delicacies his husband had so knowingly prepared to entice him, he desperately tried to stir himself an appetite, if only to prove worthy of later desserts. If his will were law, he would that the entire company of familiars be dismissed, in favor of a quiet eve alone with his beloved, curled under some willow tree as in times of old. Legolas found even his most carnal attentions remedial; indeed, a slow, sensuous penetration by his gifted lover would do wonders for his insomnia. 

Clearing his mind of such heated notions, he schooled himself dutifully and ventured over to their assembled family. After embracing his bond-parents, he latched on to his mate, the absences among them suddenly too glaringly evident. 

As if in compliance with this, Elrond inquired: “Is our party complete?” 

“Echoriath is expected,” Elladan informed him. “By expected, I mean has agreed to join us, in theory, but as always with such an academic mind, might accidentally be so distracted as to forget us, without any harmful intent.” Many chuckled, as they made their way to table. 

“Which may be for the best,” Glorfindel noted. “As one is never sure which Cuthalion may present himself, the joyous one reunited with his latest lover just moments before, or the abashed one jilted again that very morn. Echoriath is known to be exasperated by both.” 

“A pity, though,” Elrond mused, as he guided his lady to her seat. “They will no doubt miss an exquisite meal, if the menu’s promises are to be believed.” 

“In truth,” Elrohir gently commented, with an eye both to Legolas and to his father. “I would be as heartened by their absence as by their engaging presence, if the cause be that Tathren does not dine alone.” 

“Indeed,” Legolas seconded, grateful to his husband for his ever-comforting wisdom, but unable to say more. 

Before any could say more, Cuthalion himself sped in. 

“My apologies,” he panted, as he scooted around the table greeting his elders. “The woodcarvers called on the site, after Echoriath had left. They are pleased, though, with our progress.” Poised to take his seat, he spied his brother breach the entranceway. “Echo, the carvers came!” 

“Did they?!” he exclaimed, but would not enter but a foot. When he veered back towards the entrance, all thought he would immediately depart again. 

“They have gone,” Glorfindel reminded him, over his shoulder. “We wait upon you, ioneth.” 

“I come presently, Ada,” he assured him. 

The result of such a comedy was every eye fixed upon the strange dealings at the entranceway. Thus, the entire company held their collective breaths, when Echoriath lead Tathren within. Holding tight to his clenched cousin, they eased their way to the table, not one step unobserved by the tense, disbelieving party. Legolas alone cast his eyes down to his empty plate, lest his visceral emotions betray him in this precarious, yet vital, moment. Hidden beneath the ample table cloth, Elrohir clasped his hand. 

With a meaningful glance at his uncle, Echoriath took Tathren’s usual chair, offering his more protected seat to his cousin. Tathren clamped rigid fingers over the sloping pewter back, froze in place. 

“I hope,” he whispered humbly. “You will forgive our lateness, grandsire. Is my presence… am I welcome?” 

Elrohir, despite himself, drew in a sharp breath; his son’s sorrowful words cut deep. Legolas wove both hands around his husband’s quivering arm, willing Elrohir to feed off what little strength remained within him. 

“This is your home, my brave one,” Elrond intoned, as only a Lord and longtime grandfather could. “You are always welcome here.” 

As Tathren soberly took his seat, Cuthalion launched into a sunny tale of the day’s most significant blunder. The younger members of the company were soon embroiled in playful bickering and one-upmanship, which had the threefold purpose of entertaining their grandelders, luring Tathren into the conversation, and allowing Elrohir and Legolas time to acclimate themselves to their son’s too-heartening presence. 

When he was not concerned with his still trembling husband, Legolas found himself unable to quit stealing glances of his son. His glowing eyes viewed with unwavering awe as he slurped his soup, gingerly ripped off pieces of his lembas, and dunked them in the same absent manner as when he was but an elfling. He held his fork regally, as they had taught him, but his swordsman’s arm forced his knife too hard, which occasioned it to squeak faintly across the plate, like a mouse underfoot. Legolas never thought he’d find that squeak aught but aggravating, nor the gummy clack of Tathren’s tongue against his teeth after taking a sip of wine. Indeed, every imperfection, every idiosyncrasy was suddenly so enthralling to him, that he eventually forgot even Elrohir at his side and thus did not mark how his tender husband could not longer keep his countenance. 

Elladan, however, watched his brother like a hawk, so when the elf-knight swallowed a mouthful down painfully hard and laid his napkin over his plate, he sat up warrior-straight, which in turn alerted Tathren to his father’s distress. Elrohir found he could not still his too-visible shaking; instead, he mumbled his excuses and rose on unsteady feet. To everyone’s astonishment, he warned Legolas off with a stinging glare, then gathered what little dignity still favored him and quietly swept from the hall. 

Before he’d even cleared the door, Tathren was up and after him.

The clang of Legolas’ fork broke their stunned silence, as everyone struggled not to stare. The archer’s own sterling eyes would not quit the entranceway; his spirit fled with them even if his body stayed behind. He implicitly knew how ashamed his proud, ever-tempered Elrohir would be of the trouble he had caused. He pleaded with fair Elbereth that Tathren would prove a balm to his gutted soul, not a bilious accuser. He longed with every bit of himself to seek them out, but could not bear the thought that Tathren had not yet forgiven him, that he would only be reconciled with his more overtly giving father. 

Elladan’s third and final summons pierced into his consciousness, but the words did not register until he met his insistent eyes. 

“Go, you fool!!” he had bellowed at him, leaving the table resolutely agape. 

As if ordered by a superior officer, Legolas leapt up to answer him, to finally quiet the urging of his tempestuous heart. While the collected party sighed in hopeful frustration, he strode out into the corridor, belatedly wondering just where his dear family had absconded to. They had not run far. Indeed, but a turn into the main thoroughfare found them, sobbing Elrohir entrenched in their tearful son’s embrace, as Tathren whispered pledges and apologies to him. 

Swallowing back his own flintshod emotions, Legolas moved hesitantly towards them. Before he could announce himself, Elrohir was righted, ever sensible to his mate’s presence. Out of the corner of his eye, Tathren caught sight of him. He whirled around.

“Ada!!” Tathren cried, then sank into his waiting arms. 

Legolas precipitously lost what little pride was left him and crushed his son into a fierce embrace. 

*********************************

Nearly listless with fatigue, Tathren lumbered across the midnight courtyard. The gigantic glass dome of the greenhouse before him glowed, with preternatural incandescence, from the torchlight within; sea greens and cool indigos complimented the dandelion wisps of white-yellow flame. With an easy smile, he recalled the filmy petals of the anemone, billowing like a maiden’s robes in the tide sweep, and he yearned for the hush attentions of the darkling elf within. 

The thought of basking in the heady aura of those golden eyes awhile, of pressing his face to the peach-blush cheek and of twining with the lithe frame, urged him up the last of the stone steps. The ornate entrance was purposefully overgrown with spindly vines and clumped with fecund moss, the gardener’s giving touch evident even in the decor greenery. After long deliberations with his two visibly repentant, ever-loving fathers, the young adventurer, exhausted past even his boundless endurance in conciliation’s wake, had wanted for nothing but to be seized by lissome architect’s arms, but to sink into his bashful one’s doting embrace. 

In eight confounding, spellbinding, revolutionary and anarchic days, Tathren had come to regard his genial cousin as no other before. Though a grateful peace reigned within him, the vital pact between fathers and son now resealed, he had found their quiet celebration missing someone essential, yet unheralded, to their reunion. The one who had succored him, with supple body, with ever-nurturing spirit, though his most scathing nights. The one who gave up every weapon in his arsenal, every trick in his sack without doubt or regret, every scrap of knowledge, every ply of skill, every draught from his wellspring heart and still had baleful reserves, whose peerless generosity only seemed to further enrich his character. Once the trust of this timid one was wholeheartedly earned, Tathren had discovered, there was no end to the dulcet gardens in which a tired soul could graze, no borderland nor firmament that bound his heart’s blessings. 

He had but to deserve them, to earn through righteous constancy this everlasting heart.

He had been a great and gallant fool, he now knew, to break with his fathers over the bruising scorn of his most unworthy grandsire. It was his tender cousin’s worth he should have fought for, for the right to court him, their acceptance should he win him. A storm more bold and ominous than the one he had so recently weathered loomed over their but nascent relations, its black and brimstone clouds born in the forge of his heart. The knowledge of these further trials that faced him had sundered the last of his will, of his waking power. Sleep beckoned fierce, as did the plentiful folds of Echoriath’s silken skin. 

As he lurched down the pebble-lined paths, through the misty air of the greenhouse, avid amber eyes turned from the examination of yet another sickly orchid and welcomed him within. Before he could summon the strength to blink, he collapsed into the steady, solid arms he had longed for, which ably guided him over to the waiting cot. With the murmured assurance that they would love come morn, he was caressed, petted, unfettered of his cares and warmed by a lengthy hug. Soon, the lion’s share of his garments were shed on the alcove floor, his braids loosed through by soothing fingers, and he was nestled tight in a hot bed of animal pelts, with the plump-lipped promise that he would not sleep alone. 

By Elbereth’s grace, he prayed he never would again. 

 

End of Part Six


	7. Part 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As their relationship flourishes, our two elves think towards revelation and its dire consequences.

Part Seven

His rousing, on this sallow morn, had been twofold. 

As the cloying fugue of sleep evaporated into a pinching consciousness, his wincing, woozy senses registered the teeth that cuffed at the column of his neck, the lips that smeared over the dagger edge of his jaw, the tongue that prodded at his closed, lax mouth. The randy cub of an elf who shared his bed prowled territorially over him, purring when their flush skins singed together and pawing his legs apart. With a predatory growl, he pounced between them, his elephantine engorgement butting against his own too-ready shaft. 

When Tathren groaned, those lush, voluptuous lips sucked onto his red mouth, the tiger tongue plundering its slumber-soured depths, as if for cream. With a long swipe beneath, his own was soon skillfully drawn out and mercilessly fellated, as a nimble touch smoothed, kneaded, and petted him body-long, lingering on his tough, taut buttocks. His irradiant blue eyes opened to the sight of his darkling lover-cousin desperately unwound, groping for the salve even as he began to rock against him, each churn of their raw hips eliciting sharp bolts of intensely carnal pleasure. Tathren batted the bottle from his limp grasp and clasped his hand in a near-crushing hold, their blunt grind too gorgeously wanton to balm away sensation. 

Echoriath grinned wolfishly when their eyes locked together; he raised up onto his elbows, reared his raven mane, and thrust pointedly, pinning him down hard awhile, before setting a relentless rhythm. As he watched the once terribly chaste elf become embroiled in a slow-burn rapture, Tathren was reverent with a teacher’s sage satisfaction. Through the long weeks of their togetherness – ten, now - the cavernous belly of Echo’s self-confidence had been steadily, patiently filled by the spoils of their ravenous coupling. His innocence had necessitated his submission, but soon he would be longly fed by Tathren’s fervor and would hunger for dominance. By the craven tenor of this bold awakening, the golden elf’s taking at his cousin’s behest would not wait long. 

Tathren doubted he could desire it more. 

When lost to daydreaming of the coming moment of his breaching, he was surprised by the first bite of release at the base of his now turgid erection. My, but such talents his sweet one had developed! Echoriath was lost to passion above him, slamming his manic hips home as Tathren writhed enthusiastically. With a ragged cry, he let the blaze of completion overtake him, shooting hot spurts of his salty seed across Echoriath’s swollen abdomen even as his own was emphatically soaked. 

The darkling elf collapsed beside him, panting, giggling, his fevered skin too sensitized for cuddling. He licked his pulpy lips salaciously, savoring the echo of their dizzying kisses, then fought to temper his breaths. 

“Masterful,” Tathren complimented, as he rolled onto his side. He snatched up a lock of ebony hair and traced the bristly end around his cousin’s peaked nipple. He delighted in the resulting shiver, the stealthy fingers that stole his hand away and twined with his own. “Perhaps, when we return from the shore, we might explore the final lesson of you learning. Your readiness was keenly felt, this morn.” 

“Readiness for?” Echo queried, foisting shrewd, but lust-fogged eyes on his elder. 

“My bedding,” he smirked, careful to hide his eagerness, lest the timidity return. Sure enough, a definite blush heated his cousin’s pale cheeks. “Would you not have me, meleth?”

“Aye,” came the enigmatic reply, as his lazy grip tightened and his lax shoulders grew rigid. His reasoning mind was reflected in cool, averted eyes; they were wet when they locked on him again. “Are you wearied by our lessons, tathrelasse? W-would you that they… f-find their end?” 

In an unanticipated instant, the confident cub that had roused him molted back into his skittish, coltish cousin. Both, however, had thoroughly misunderstood him. 

“I would sooner be emasculated by an orc,” he vowed playfully. “Than see an end to our intimacy.” 

He could not ignore the tremor of relief that quaked through the darkling elf, nor the burnished regard that bathed him. They would soon be wanted by his twin, this was no time for the love troths that sprang, unbidden, onto his heavy tongue. Nevertheless, he balefully reminded himself, their fractious time would soon come upon him. His eagerness to be dominated by his timely lover was coupled with no little fear at his own potential reaction. Only once before had another taken him, the blubbering result had been rather discomfiting, to say the least of his overreaction. To lie, now, with an elf who so utterly besotted him was hazardous, at best, folly at its worst. Yet he would chance it, he had resolved within himself, if the risk meant such a reward as Echoriath’s love. 

The final test would be their impending sojourn at the seaside, with Cuthalion’s accompaniment. For the first time since their relations began, they would remain decidedly apart, yet constantly in each other’s honorable, too-tempting company. Each repressive day they’d spent at the building site had been rewarded by nightfall; at the ocean, they would be forced to sleep side by side, but somehow untouching, awkwardly but necessarily chaste. Could they suffer this separation? Could they keep counsel? Tathren was unsure, but would let Echoriath’s behavior guide him. In truth, he was desperate to know how deeply the young elf felt their relations, how amenable he might be to their eventual revelation, how sterling might his eyes shine after days apart and how readily he might then confess his love. 

If, indeed, Tathren was worthy to be named his beloved. 

Shaking these unfathomable thoughts away, Tathren found himself the subject of his ponderous cousin’s acute observation. He realized he himself had not spoken since his own spirited vow; amber eyes examined him with incisive care. Gone was any speck of bashfulness, replaced by a stunning intensity, by the raising fire of his intellect. His conversation, however, was casual in the extreme. 

“Why do you not have flowers?” he inquired softly. “Or plants of any kind? There are troughs on your balcony and pots stacked in your larder, but no shrubs to root them.”

“If you recall,” he defended himself. “I am but recently returned from adventuring.” 

“You’ve resided here for over twenty years,” Echoriath insisted. “Yet there is no trace of sprout, seed, or soil in them. The small garden of your back terrace is barren, your water ducts outmoded, there are but two chairs to your dining table and a third, if required, supplanted by a large steel bucket. There is but a twine sack in your guest chamber, your greeting room spacious but sparsely furnished, and, as the river is quite far, a cascade that tumbled through a grate in your deck would do wonders.” 

With a disbelieving laugh, Tathren shook his head in bafflement. “Have you completed your ruinous tally, or am I to suffer more berating, master builder?” 

To his continued surprise, Echoriath did not blush at his remark, but firmed his features in tight resolution. 

“Even with considerable renovation,” he noted cautiously. “This talan has outgrown its usefulness for one of your station.” 

“My station?!” Tathren snorted, though remained thoroughly amused by their strange discussion. He guessed at the covert intent of his cousin’s cutting remarks. “And you would build me another, I suppose?” 

“Nay,” Echoriath hushly dismissed the thought, his hands beginning to tremble. Tathren watched the play of emotion over his stern face, before the darkling elf ventured into perilous waters with his subsequent suggestion. “My own talan, once complete, will have every amenity you might require, as well as two becoming guest bedchambers. Why do you not… y-you might simply… take one for your own.” 

Tathren’s shock could not have been more severe. 

“Y-you… you would that I…?” he stammered, as Echoriath hastened to explain. 

“None would suspect us,” he elaborated. “We have always been the closest of cousins and confidants, after all. Erestor and Haldir will require a talan for their kindred sooner than one can be constructed, their compound is but a stone’s throw from the willow thicket and even less from here. We might soon be called away by the council…” He cursed quietly to himself, then soldiered courageously on. “In truth, I would have you near. I would… Tathren, I…” 

A kiss silenced him, so ripe and sweet none could mistake its meaning. 

“Will you never cease to astonish me, lirimaer?” Tathren praised, after drawing him close. “I can think of no smarter gambit to ease our fathers into acceptance of our… our relations.” No need, just yet, to voice the true import of his affections. 

“Indeed,” Echoriath seconded, so overjoyed by his reaction he might verily have burst in his arms. “Yet I fear we must reveal ourselves to one whom… Truly, I cannot fathom how he would not revel in our startling news.”

“Talion,” Tathren agreed. “Aye, he must know. Else he will cotton to our coupling soon enough… for certes, if you continue to bay like the heathen wolfhounds of Angmar, in your throes. Best we appraise him, carefully, at the shore. I will think on the manner of it.” 

“A wolfhound?!” Echoriath objected, though his gossamer eyes brimmed with mirth. “At least I do not snort and harrumph in my sleep like a… a congested mumakil.”

“*I* am no mumakil,” he considered mischievously. “But perhaps our esteemed grandsire can be so injuriously branded, when napping by the reflecting pool?” 

At that, Echoriath was seized with a veritable symphony of snickers, his manner so giddy that Tathren could naught but join in. 

********************************************

As he clopped energetically up the final rung of the mithril staircase, which snaked up the sturdy mallorn to their family talan, Echoriath, fresh from the river, paused on the doorstep and surveyed the misty morning view. Isolated from the rest of the family compound by virtue of its height, on a crisp autumn day and with a polished spyglasss the bluebell roofs of his fathers’ residence were visible from outside the ore caves on the second shelf of Taniquetil. They lay atop the lush treeline as tulips dropped in a dense bed of shrubs; the plumes of smoke emanating from the chimney stem like a flock of birds scouring for seeds. The house itself - its interconnected, elliptical segments uniformly tiled by slates of silver, cobalt, and indigo stone - resembled a bunch of grapes fallen between the colossal boughs of the premier mallorn of the colony, grown from the root of Telperion itself.

From such sterling heights, colossal, intimidating Taniquetil could be seen in all its much-hallowed majesty, her pyre-like peak burnished with the Valar’s eternal light. Even in the dank of first winter, Echoriath could but glance out his window and watch the veil of fog undulate over the mountainside, the progress of various torch-bearing parties as they ascended to the luminous crest. Little wonder he himself so craved solitude, raised in such quiescent, such reverent surroundings. On this balmy morn, a brume-swollen wind wilded through the gargantuan leaves, which batted against the sloping roof tiles like the leather flaps of a warrior’s surecoat. The breeze was kiss-heady in the meadow below, but on high the gusts were raucous, stinging his eyes raw and whipping the tips of his sodden hair. 

He was, however, dry in an instant.

After skulking indoors, he discovered that the stone-slated exterior blunted the better part of the cacophonous leaves, their jarring flagellation softened to a strange, broom-sweep susurration. Unnerved by the still yet simpering atmosphere of the entrance hall, he hastened to his deep-lodged bedchamber, but as he padded down the shadow-flayed hall, a guttural, oddly assonant grunt drew him towards their central hearth. Twas as if the dawn had not yet risen in the reception hall; the bulky tulle of the drawn curtains kept out all the but faintest sheen of sun, around the seating area candle stubs had unceremoniously flamed out hours ago, the fire itself was a waning burn of embers and ashen logs. The two figures blanketed in wolfskins before the hearth had little need, however, of that burnished source’s warmth, as they were at present quite hotly embroiled. 

With a knowing smile, Echoriath crept closer to the cusp of the room; the now familiar, impassioned groans of his Ada-Dan mounted as, from what he could tell of their thankfully shroud position, he was so being. Though this occasion was hardly the first on which he’d come upon his fathers torridly entwined, Echoriath found himself newly fascinated, in light of his own recently accomplished tutelage. Indeed, throughout his youth he had always taken comfort in the poorly stifled moans that nightly haunted their dormant halls, in the fevered, heartening physical expression of his parents’ adoration. While some children, namely his brother, were often embarrassed by the candidness with which fathers such as his admitted, and happily explained, the necessity and the joys of such loving interaction, Echoriath had been grateful of their openness, of their emphatic, oft too-vivid example. Whenever his curious mind was seized by a blush-inducing question, regardless of its innocence his Ada-Dan or his Ada-Fin gladly offered their wisdom, which had allowed him to explore intellectually the concepts of pleasure and of desire that Tathren would later so skillfully unleash from within him. 

Indeed, his first bedding with Tathren would have been far more intimidating had he not been an accidental witness to his parents’ tenderness, both in routine affection and in the coupling act. In detailing for him, around the time of his first majority, how wondrously rejuvenating a lover’s attentions could be, his Ada-Dan had encouraged him to see beyond his own judgmental nature – in the wake of Cuthalion’s burgeoning, yet already rampant promiscuity – and embrace the part of himself in which had so recently awakened a confounding sensuality. The path to his own blissful explorations has been both endless and disheartening, but paled in comparison to the millennia through which his Ada had longed for, and had subsequently been ignored by, his other, more proud father. 

Oftentimes, the comfort thought of their mirrored struggles was the only thing that had kept him sane. 

Thus, he could not help but observe, for a brief time, the magnificence of their melding forms: how every kiss, grasp, and cull was worshipfully fused to the other’s flush skin, how every stroke further shattered his darkling father, how every thrust unified them in body and in flaming soul. The harmonious gaze and the boundless care which Glorfindel beamed over his beauteous, thrashing mate pricked at their son’s heart; their unyielding ardor, their incendiary oneness a daunting inspiration. He wondered if he and Tathren were so, in throes; if their loving seemed so artful, so giving, so thoroughly self-eclipsing. If the love he’d felt between them that very dawn was a barely nascent fact and not the ephemeral fictions of a heart cleaving to ether. 

When their steady joining grew fervent with impending completion, Echoriath left them to their privacy. As he slipped into his bedchamber, the raising cries of their mutual release echoed through the hush corridor. 

***

Long moments later, after easing out of their hearthside pelts and tucking his dozing mate snugly within, Elladan groped along the floor for his fallen sarong, the drape of his thick ebony hair as effective at tunneling his groggy vision as a horse’s leather flaps. Luck favored him when he tripped over the velvet sheath, its indigo folds, embroidered with silver latticework, soon wrapped around his lithe waist. Spying Glorfindel’s shirt beneath the sword rack, he tugged it on as he ambled out, only to realize halfway down the hall how his husband’s considerably broader shoulders exposed an indecent amount of his own sculpted chest. 

With a self-berating sigh, he fumbled to knot the decorative ties, as he made his tipsy way towards Echoriath’s rooms. Uncharacteristically out of sorts from his recent tumbling, Elladan’s woozy head would most certainly rather be lolled in the crook of Glorfindel’s kiss-bruised neck, but he had not seen Echoriath for days, now, and both of his sons would soon be off to the shore with their cousin. There would be three heady days ahead in which to laze with his beloved; Valar knew how many opportunities were left him to converse with his rapidly maturing child. Indeed, as he peeked through the open, offering doorway, the sight that greeted him was equally encouraging and anxious to the parent of a so often solitary son. 

River-fresh and ruddy cheeked, Echoriath, himself shirtless, was latching his ready pack, his hunting belt, bow, and bountiful quiver laid out beside him. Though his boots were on, he’d not yet grappled into his newly pressed tunic, which hung from the cornice over his alcove-shroud bed. When he stood to cross the room, Elladan nearly gasped at the strapping frame construction work had wrought of his former slip of a son. His creamy skin nearly rippled, like his rack of an abdomen, over meat-fed muscle, his preternatural grace imbued with a newly feral quality. Gone was the diaphanous skin, the jutting ribs, the emaciated legs; in their place, sinuous limbs pivoted with a virtuoso’s elegance about a sleek torso, well-nourished gams, and hips that had learned to stalk. Even the air about him bristled with a vital vigor, as if his potential charged the very gulfs of space that surrounded him. He and Glorfindel had suspected something other than a builder’s tenacious pride kept him relentlessly occupied this last month, the unmistakable evidence now traced a necklace of faint and ferocious purpled marks around his throat. 

Their young magnificent had, at long last, found himself a lover. 

Though a milliard questions pricked his impatient tongue, Elladan chose the appropriately paternal route and stayed his eagerness. Instead, as Echoriath move to tend to his appearance at the mirror, his too-curious father padded graciously in, soon looming behind his reflection. At his son’s bashful smile – a brief, grateful sign of his ever-soft character – Elladan snatched his brush from the night table, then began to work through the raven sheathes of his swim-tousled hair. As he combed through the voluptuous locks, he marveled at Echoriath’s serenity. Not once did he flinch, or gripe, or hunch his shoulders, nor did he surreptitiously maintain a safe distance. Instead, he sighed with a languorous contentment, leaning back into the slow, massage-like strokes over his scalp. Neither did he hasten to make needless conversation, but basked in the long silence before a grin of no little ebullience tippled his lips.

“You’d best pay court to your seamstress, Ada,” he quipped mercurially. “That shirt rather lacks precision.” 

“Whereas your shirt is altogether lacking,” Elladan repliqued, eyeing his scarred neck. “And your choice in adornment… somewhat barbarous, nay?” The concerned father was heartened to see he could still make his son blush. He set down the heavy brush, then drew out thatches of hair for his braids. “Was he gentle with you?”

“At first,” Echoriath smirked, now flush with pride. 

“And is he tender?” he inquired, knowing himself at the precipice of fatherly indulgence. Echoriath clasped his fingers free, at that, sundering the braid weave and resting their entwined hands on his shoulder. 

“He was a prince,” Echoriath beamed, as silver eyes met gold in the cool surface of the mirror. “He continues to… to mentor me, in ways I could not even have imagined. He is a true companion, faithful, deserving... beauteous. I have no regrets, Ada, nor should you for encouraging me.”

“Only one,” Elladan exhaled, momentarily shutting his eyes. “That my timid little elf will never again seek the shelter of my arms, but this vital creature you have become. Though my brother warned me well enough of a father’s wares upon a son’s timely maturation.” After but one clipped breath, he opened the tranquil pools of argent eyes and regarded his growing son with affection. “And might one’s family ever come to be acquainted with an elf of such esteem?” 

When Echoriath became almost imperceptibly still, his father swallowed back his considerable amusement. He had guessed than an elf as secure in privacy as his darkling son would be none too swift in introducing even a casual affair to family, much less a beloved. For this companion was indeed beloved, the young elf’s secret cares given away by every oblique mention of his bed-teacher, every shimmer of his gossamer eyes. When those amber pools averted themselves for but a flicker, when he waited a hairsbreadth too long on his reply, however, Elladan was seized by a bold sense of disquiet. 

His son was struggling to form a half-truth, so as not to give him an outright lie. 

“Forgive me, ioneth,” he saved him, despite how his skin prickled with objection. “A father’s eagerness often forgets him his rather precarious position in such green and awkward circumstance.” Instantly apologetic himself, Echoriath turned towards him and clutched their mingled hands to his heart. 

“Your place is here, Ada, to the last,” he pledged, though he began to tremble. “I am ever beholden to your generous care, your sage and vigilant counsel.” 

Impressed, but not entirely assuaged, Elladan softly inquired: “Then will you take but a piece of your wise father’s counsel, Echoriath?” 

“Always, Adar,” he swore, raptly attentive. 

“In the manner I bequeathed to you, by your siring,” Elladan explained. “One will ever stand above all, in the intense and impenetrable hold of a true lover’s heart. You and I, ioneth, are wrought from the same constant cloth, tenaciously bound, yet easily frayed. Fraught, by misuse. We love but once, eternally, I have known it of you since your infancy. Be shrewd, nin pen-ind, be sure of he upon which you shine your immortal blessings. I fear I am already too late in advising you thus, but best not to leave a thing perilously unsaid. If you doubt him, retreat, before the tax of infinite time plagues you to grief. Do not give the whole of yourself to one who cannot keep you.” 

Echoriath remained immovable, as he digested his father’s caution. While Elladan sensed some expected resistance, he also felt that his advisement was deftly noted, squired away for a later moment of private reflection. To his great relief, Echoriath soon embraced him. 

“I am not yet too far grown not to need your succor, Ada,” he whispered, seemingly overcome by some sharp emotion. “Be at peace, while we are gone, and know that I will ever trust in your kindly words, in times of strife.” 

As he held strong to his blithe child, Elladan thanked Elbereth there was still some sweetness in him. 

* * *

Cuthalion was not so cunning of mind that he could readily divine what manner or mischief was afoot, but he was also not the mule-headed orc his brother and his cousin seemed to take him for. He may not be as genial, nor as ‘sensitized’ to the nuances of character as either of his companions, but the cloaking hood they repeatedly attempted, surreptitiously, to throw over his eyes did not blind him to their complicity, though the cause of their secrecy he had not yet devised. In truth, he suspected no dense nor onerous collusion between them, though he’d had instances of doubt during their ride, by their campfire, and in the night’s furrowed quietude. Some spectral presence lingered on the outskirts of their cheer, waiting, as a predator might, to pounce, once his vigilant eyes had been averted. 

By this if accidental deception, they had issued an unspoken challenge, one no warrior of his salt nor caring brother could longly leave unmet. 

As he waded, knee-deep, into the constant wash of the ocean tide, he looked out into the vast horizon and mentally reviewed the moments that had pricked him. The journey itself had passed merrily as always, with goading races, impish insults, and unwitting swats to a horse’s rump all in the usual, unhurried vein. Both twins had taken considerable pause, when Tathren had skipped off his horse and landed poorly, but no harm came of the stunt except a rather stunning bruise across his backside. Echo had insisted on treating the wound himself, but as Cuthalion had no patience for healing, he felt he could make little of this particular incident. Though the rest of the ride had given Tathren some tenacious discomfort, by the time they doffed their packs and shot towards the surf, stripping wholeheartedly as they ran, his cousin was righted enough to summarily toss him over. Indeed, the rest of the afternoon was spent in horseplay and the like, of a free-spirited glee not experienced since his elflinghood. Over and again, Tathren wrestled them into submission and launched them into the deep, his energy relentless, his grin as glorious as the subsequent sunset. 

Love, Cuthalion had reasoned, after one particularly brutal slap against the waves. His cousin was clearly, hopelessly in love. How else to explain the near immediate expulsion of gloom at his reconciliation with his fathers, some time ago. Tathren was ever one to let his cares gray his attitude for many, slow-healing months after, but here he was entirely reformed. The explorers had oft whispered to him of their late night visits to his talan, after revels at the ale house, only to be discouraged by the wanton groans breaking from within. As for Echo, he must have knowledge of this voluble elf’s identity, but this was not enough to conscience his brief flashes of reservation, of self-restraint. 

As was in glaring evidence when Cuthalion had returned from hunting. Tathren had again declined to join him, preferring to build a spit and stoke their waning fire. Echo was typically lost to furious sketching, but curiously perched atop a rock not ten feet from the tent. When he later returned, a prize elk across his shoulders, neither was to be found. The animal was flayed and roasted by the time they staggered back to camp, emerging, to his surprise, from the forest wilds. Though he did not protest a wit when they excused themselves as berry-picking, neither did he swallow such a lump of coal as that ridiculous tale. Echoriath did indeed have a tunic skirt full of rare olafine berries, which proved a savory glaze to the elk-meat, but more he could not for a second meet Tathren’s eyes. Tathren was similarly distracted, if not entirely absent during their stilted meal, though he would, every once in a while, stare rather insistently at Echoriath, until the other flicked his eyes up to satisfy him. 

Cuthalion had feared that they deliberately concealed their anger so as not to spoil this happy retreat, but another unfathomable instance reared its obscure, ambiguous head. Unfortunately, the memory was veiled in the haze of inebriation. After supper, they had imbibed, as was their want, of two aged bottles from Forochel Bay. If pressed, he would abashedly admit to consuming an entire bottle himself, but to his faint surprise and more enthusiastic pleasure, Tathren had shared his with Echoriath. In the past, his brother never drank more than the bottom of a goblet’s worth; with Tathren’s unspoken encouragement, he took several generous draughts, enough to fire his cheeks a hot scarlet, before long. He had moved closer to his cousin to ease the tipsy passing of the rather excellent vintage, their quarrel tempered by raucous taunts and his own long-winded tales. 

In the thick of one such a recounting, Cuthalion had paused for effect, only to find his audience embroiled in other matters. Tathren had clumsily spilt a splash of wine on his light-colored shirt. Echoriath, giggling, had used his own darker tunic to dab it, causing both to fall into hysterics only intoxication could provoke, and thereby begin to tussle. Tathren obviously being of greater strength, he had soon yanked his cousin violently forward, which had tripped him and landed him cold in his lap. As Echoriath had struggled drunkenly to extricate himself, Tathren had taken control, his every move barred by a caging limb, a constricting hold. Rather than be aggravated, Echoriath had done little to truly fight him off, going lax until, through Tathren’s own manipulations, he had ended by looking up from his lap, hair splayed wild across his legs, a too-wicked smirk taxing his cousin’s patience. To Cuthalion’s continuing surprise, Tathren had flustered mightily at this move, bucking his brother off as a startled steed might. In deference, Echoriath had counseled himself, but not before a mischievous glance ranked over his befuddled cousin. While Echoriath studiously quieted and returned his attention to the tale, Tathren had been lost to them, draining the bottle in record time and uncorking their third. Cuthalion had hastened to conclude his tale, then swept off to bed, thinking, despite the encroaching stupor, that his companions required some privacy to properly resolve themselves. 

In truth, he had not heard a sound from the moment his head hit the sand. 

That morning had broke peacefully, both cousin and brother behaving as ever before, if somewhat slower, due to the collective pounding of their leaden skulls. A stew of entrails and some athelas-spiked tea had hardied them for the day’s delights, but it was the good company and their boundless merriment that had truly cured them. After a replenishing swim, Tathren had thought to hunt alone, so Cuthalion had stolen some time for reflection, wading through the sea. As he toddled about the mulch sand, he felt on the cusp of his solution, but an answer yet evaded him. He wished, not for the first time, that he had been blessed with a greater share of intellect; surely even his genial brother could do with a mite less and still be unparalleled among elfkind. 

Before he could truly launch himself into musing, a deft missile whizzed over his shoulder. The not-terribly-sharp shooter soon linked arms with him, a sun-dazzled smile alighting his twilight features. 

“Why so glum, gwanur?” Echoriath queried. “Are you plotting out the gruesome details of your latest conquest? Setting a snare for some skittish, unsuspecting ellyth?” Cuthalion would have laughed more heartily, if the question had not been so uncharacteristically bold for his soft brother. 

“Perhaps,” he enigmatically replied. “Perhaps I am merely sussing out the cause of those rather flagrant marks around your neck, my sneaky one. Snake bite? Assault by venomous pollen? Glass-blowing incident?” At that last attempt, Echoriath swallowed back a gasp. 

“There was, indeed, an incident at the forge,” the darkling elf admitted, his color perilously rising. “Though there was little blowing of… glass.” At this, he shook not with shame but with giggles, though his cheeks nearly glowed with heat. 

“You have a lover,” he needlessly intuited, smarting that he had not guessed before. 

“I have a lover,” Echoriath confessed, with overwhelming glee. “Perhaps even…” He instinctively hugged his brother, so buoyant was he from the revelation. Cuthalion could feel the passion quaking through his slender frame, so fierce as to eventually shatter his bones to dust. The arms that released him clamped ardent hands on his, his brother’s eyes moist with unshed, joyous tears. “Talion, why did you not tell me how wondrous it is to love?! Though in truth I have loved for some time now… but the act of it, the joining of bodies, of melding of spirits, the… the rapture!! Even here, among my brethren, the pull of longing is relentless.” 

“Then why did you part from him, even for so brief a time?” Cuthalion questioned him. “Why did you not invite him along? We would have been glad of his company, gwanur, Tathren as well as I myself.”

“Hannon le, Talion,” Echoriath smiled gratefully, though avoided answering him. “It heartens me to know that he is so welcome among us. Alas…” 

Cuthalion took this regret for sign of slight repentance, but no apology was forthcoming. For one so shrewd, his brother was preciously thoughtless in some regards. He decided his reservations could not be so easily cast off, even in the face of his brother’s too-apparent contentment. 

“Yet methinks you have long confided in our cousin,” Cuthalion whispered, his eyes hard with resentment. “The name of the elf you love, of his regard… you sought his counsel before the night of your bedding, even after the confessions I have made and the tales I have shared with you. Is that not the secret between you?”

“Secret?” Echoriath started, struck by his brother’s words. “You mistake us, gwanur. This is the very matter of the private audience I have sought with you, this morn.” 

“He has known of it for months,” Cuthalion charged him, his brow fraught and his face mired in hurt. “Since the quarrel with his fathers, if I may speak plain. Think you I have not marked how you steal away from the building site, from dinner, to beg an audience with him before taking to your lover’s bed? He is the true brother of your heart!! I was usurped long ago…” 

“Talion,” he groaned sympathetically, pressing his forehead to that of his dejected twin. “As usual, you see the scouts within the trees, but not the arrows flying forth.” 

“I may not be blessed with your more obvious talents,” Cuthalion retorted, yet did not pull away. “But mine have not turned me cold, lead me to deceive my betters and shun those who hold me most dear.” 

Echoriath turned serious, but not sober. “Aye, there was some necessary dissimulation, but only to preserve… in truth, I thought you had guessed it, from the cantankerous manner in which you left our camp last night. The ruse with the berries was a paltry veil, I admit, but even then I thought you doubted. But the wine… I behaved poorly. We spoke of nothing else for hours, I swear it.” 

“Why should you speak on a foolish brother?” he spat back. “When talk could yet turn to the hallowed topic of your new lover.”

With a mighty sigh, Echoriath drew gently away and stared balefully at him. His face was open as never before, with acute worry, no little frustration, and a poignant empathy; Cuthalion felt he had never truly regarded him until that very moment. No amount of divination, no act of foresight or detection, could have prepared him for the coming revelation.

“Nay, you are ever mistaken, gwanur,” Echoriath corrected him, beset by halting, hesitant breaths. “I spoke not of my lover… but *with* him.” 

Cuthalion blanched, felt his knees give out. He sat, listless, in the frothy surf, for an eternity it seemed, though his mind was not frozen, or numb, but overswept by a flurry of linking, connection, remembrance… moments lit with a different hue, blanks of information filled, touches, looks, too-stealthy smiles all readily explained. As the rushing waves soaked him through and his despairing brother waited on his response, he fought to right himself within a world so foreign to him, so permanently and inconceivably shifted aloft. 

It was some time before he realized Tathren was suddenly there, staring down at him, arm woven around Echoriath’s waist too tightly to be innocent. No action of his cousin’s was innocent, not ever again. 

“Do you love him?” came his first, rasp-throated inquiry. Both elves stared further, unsure which was to reply. “Echo?” 

A beatific look came over his darkling brother’s lush countenance, so comely and tender Cuthalion could not doubt its veracity. 

“Ever have I loved him,” Echoriath offered his answer, not to his soggy brother but to the elf in question. “Though I have but of late come to learn the manner of it.” 

At this unaccounted profession, Tathren’s aquamarine eyes sprung from the spumey depths of the sea and alighted on his cousin fair. He basked in the heated aura of brilliant golden eyes, knew the elf they beheld to be the dearest treasure to him. He found he could naught but kiss this glorious elf, fervently, eloquently, as if his life-breath was not without but within soft flesh of his mouth. 

They kissed until there was no sea, no shore, no mountain above nor forest beyond…until a silver-maned creature sprung up, light as foam, from the tide and crushed them into his arms, shrieking his joy. 

****************************

The sulfurous moon of late summer floated, like a daub of butter in the waters of a percolating cauldron, amidst the brume fronds that streaked the midnight sky. As the looming mist dissipated in a cool breath of wind, a couple emerged from the willow thicket into the mossy-boughed ederwoods, their humble raiment dappled with leftover spray. All around them, leaf tongues lapped up the last of the fallen rain and branches glistened with moisture, the lawn slick under their grass-stuck feet. Neither elf minded the delay of the sudden shower, as the forest was never so mysterious, never so inviting, as after a warm summer rain. 

The blonde elf, luminous as the yellow moon above, allowed his ebony-haired companion to lean generously against him as they strolled, their arms too willingly locked around the other’s waist, their lax shoulders and their lazy heads folded lovingly together. Not even the emergent woodland creatures that scurried to their rest could mistake the deep, tranquil wells of emotion that flowed so effortlessly between them; such was their completion that even languidly linked they became one ever-replenishing source. They meandered about the lush wood without care for the route of their journey or contemplation of their eventual destination, simply content to wander the humid woods with their beloved. 

When the lonely nightingale found them, in a sparsely-treed, quiescent clearing, Legolas’ could not help but smile wistfully at her mournful, melancholy song. He hearkened to his languorous mate, noting the casual loll of the head into his nape and the placid beat of his constant heart. He had come to cherish these long, silent walks with his bonded, a chance each night to express a chaste, but no less ardent, affection for him. Ever since Elrohir had bashfully confessed of the incontrollable, insatiable lust that afflicted him, Legolas had insisted upon such hush moments between them, if naught but to maintain the rapt hold of their bond. 

At first, Elrohir had barely been able to brave the shortest of strolls, before fever sickened him to moaning and he would end, crouched and quaking, balled up shamefully at the base of a sheltering willow, Legolas begging for leave to carry him home. Though he had happily given of himself as often as his husband had desired him, even one of his archer’s endurance could not couple so voraciously, for days upon days, weeks upon weeks, without the influence of some bodily spell or preternatural necromancy. His gallant elf-knight had bourn these limitations with characteristic grace, though every coddling touch or succoring clutch raised through him like the boldest flames. 

To further his poor husband’s trials, Erestor’s tonics had, at first, little effect on him. When the healer strengthened the potion, Elrohir suffered the opposite effect, shuffling through the house dazed, listless, like the waking dead, unable to eat, sleep, or even reason with sustained coherence. While he no longer lusted, he also no longer felt, after three burdensome days causing Legolas to storm the healing halls and demand some kind of useful solution. Erestor could do naught but inform Lord Elrond, who quickly mixed a draught that restored to his beleaguered son a grateful balance. 

Upon waking, Elrohir would drain a cup of the foul brew, which allowed him to go about his routine in fine, sated spirits. By evening, the effects would begin to ware off; their strolls now served to distract his rousing body and to tire him some, as well as for the more obvious, affectionate reasons. Once returned to their bedchamber, Elrohir could unleash the full force of his passion, until both were so exhausted that he swiftly fell asleep in the cradle of Legolas’ arms. Satisfied that his mate had found some measure of peace, Legolas would then drift off himself, until Elrohir would prod him awake the next morn and charge him with the immediate brewing of his vital draught. 

While their schedule rather lacked for spontaneity, a cunning elf could manage some improvisation within; perhaps not of the physical variety, but then Legolas enjoyed Elrohir’s company on far too many levels to limit his imagination to inspired coupling venues. Indeed, he had secretly challenged himself to so enthrall Elrohir by the ardor of his courtship, that the darkling elf would forget all his child-related troubles and bask in the ample evidence of his mate’s unwavering devotion. 

He had begun simply enough, for what plan thrived on unnecessary complexity? Each morn, as the tonic simmered, he would steal out to the garden and harvest a different bloom, to adorn Elrohir’s plate at their fast-breaking. The meaning of this flower was then inscribed on a slip of parchment, which would serve as place setting. When time allowed, at the end of a long afternoon and just before their evening meal, he would draw a replenishing bath for his beloved, pour him a palate-whetting cup of honeysuckle wine, and set a volume of poetry by the bath, to peruse while he soaked. Oftentimes, during their walks, he would guide him towards some starlit field, or glittering cave, or neighboring garden, where they might sit for a while and contemplate nature’s bounty. He might turn up after his regular sword-practice sessions with Elladan to massage away his aches, or steal him from his papers and reports with a defiant archery challenge. His own favorite, however, were the rare days when, after lunchon, he would secret him away to the conservatory that adjoined Elrohir’s study, grab an incidental volume of history from the library, and fall into sprawling debate with his learned husband. Legolas did not know what he found most arousing, the manner in which Elrohir carefully weighed two opposing factors, how the elf-knight would patiently list the aftershocks of a certain calamity, or how generously he listened to even Legolas’ most outlandish theories (and a great many were spun just to see the repressed frustration ripple beneath the argent pools of those eyes). Regardless, after such an audience, Legolas would often too keenly swallow the bitter taste of Elrohir’s own plight, forcing himself to return to his duties with mind aflame and counting the minutes until nighttime as grains of sand through an hourglass. 

In truth, his efforts caused him but to wonder why they were so occasional beforehand. He doubted he would be able to entirely cease them, once Elrohir’s fever had passed. Though he may eventually run through the lion’s share of their flower garden. 

Legolas cuddled his husband closer, caressed his pale brow. Elrohir appeared so spent from his industrious afternoon at the Council, the archer wondered if they would need couple at all. When the elf-knight slowed his already labored steps in a familiar thatch of ederwoods, Legolas thought he very well might drop to sleep in his arms. Drowsy silver eyes lifted into the thick of the trees, a contented smile curled his lips. 

“Somewhere in the darkling wood,” Elrohir sighed, with more sentience than his husband would have expected from him at this late hour. “A lonely elf waits out the night.” 

“Are you lonesome, meleth?” Legolas questioned him, a spike of fear stabbing through him. 

“With such arms to berth me?” Elrohir protested. “Never, maltaren-nin. I speak of one who may yet come to be quite dear to us, but is presently unknown.” 

“How now?” Legolas nearly demanded, baffled by his riddle-like remarks. He followed the incandescent mithril eyes upwards, his own alighting on Tathren’s barren talan above. With their son presently at the shore, not a candle’s glow could be glimpsed in the dark edifice. “Has some trouble newly beset our child?” 

“Trouble? Nay,” Elrohir explained himself. “I speak of his new lover. To my rather paltry and secluded knowledge, they have not spent a night apart, since their first, some weeks ago. Months, even… though I may be mistaken. He must suffer fiercely, this night.” 

“Indeed… *he*, you say? He must,” Legolas reflected, what part of his heart that was not involved in his mate’s care going out to the poorly elf. “Tathren’s regard, once it has penetrated, is not one to be so easily shucked off. How did you come to know of this?” 

“I know little, if any at all,” Elrohir assured him. “I know the elf was innocent, yet an ellon of advanced years for one so untouched. Tathren has spoken but once of him, but I believe his very brevity and caution speak volumes of the depth of his feelings. He keeps this one with precious care. He may, indeed, have fallen in love.” 

“Then may they both be blessed,” Legolas wished into the summer night. “And may this unknown elf pass a gently troubled night, sure of our brave one’s heart, though it be absent.” 

“Praise be to him,” Elrohir seconded. “May he cherish our dearly child as ardently in return as he himself is cherished.” 

Legolas, heartened by the thought of Tathren in the first thrill of love, caught up his own beloved and softed a kiss over his mouth. 

“As you are cherished,” he purred. “Lovely one.” As he burrowed his face into the spills of black, velvety hair, Legolas found his own night-balmed body stirring some. “Shall we retire? Or are you too weary, meleth?” 

“Nay, I am too well, melethron,” Elrohir murmured, as he hugged to him. “My fever is greatly lessened, this day.” 

Legolas, piqued by this news, adjusted their position to meet his eyes. “Lessened by chance? Or by…resolution?” 

Though their stroll had been too gorgeously hush to be interrupted by sorrow, the archer felt a stealthy moroseness creep over him. He was not prepared, not on this woozy night, to face the blunt truth of Elrohir’s answer; for though he had resigned himself to the eventuality, he could not yet fake his agreement before one so dear. Elrohir perceived how the news had silenced him, hastened to assuage him. 

“Fly not blindly to forgone conclusions, meleth,” he counseled, his eyes bright and beckoning. “I am resolved in your favor, that is why the fever waits some.” 

“In…” Legolas gasped, not yet daring to believe. “You mean…?” 

“Aye,” Elrohir beamed proudly at him. “I will, if you are still agreed to the manner of it, beget us another child.” 

The elf-knight was suddenly seized in such an ebullient embrace that he thought his spine might snap. This was, however, nothing compared to the kiss that assaulted him, ravaging yet eloquent, sinking straight to his loins but shot true from the heart. When Legolas broke away, panting thunderously but with soul-piercing eyes, he knew rest was the furthest thing from his feral husband’s mind. After the weeks of blithe, undemanding succor he had received, Elrohir could naught but indulge him. He backed himself against a fat-trunked ederwood and opened his arms in welcome. They soon encircled an archer trembling with need, the promise of a golden night implicit in his sensuous overture.

“Hold tight, my beauty,” Legolas growled mischievously. “I cannot aught but love with you, now.” 

***************************

On the last, balmy morn of their sojourn, Tathren emerged from their hothouse tent into the misty sea wind, his senses on the verge of pure serenity. The ocean before him, roasted a shale blue by the late summer sun, spurt a frothy tide over the beach, the sky was crisp and prim with the promise of autumn, the sun glaring. To the north, gulls circled the lower crags of Taniquetil, scavenging for crab shells and cawing forlornly. His dazzled gaze followed the length of the rock shelf to the spear-head tip, where a familiar figure was hunched over a sketch pad. 

Tathren smiled fondly, but inwardly reproached himself. 

When Cuthalion tossed the last of their logs on the fire, the luring smell of his fast breaking and the precipitous gnaw in his gut drew him to the hearth. A bubbling cup of broth was foist into his still drowsy hands, his cousin knowing well enough to save any conversation for mid-morn, at the earliest. As Tathren settled in and took a testing sip, he examined the silvery elf for signs of disease. He could not yet quite reconcile himself with Talion’s unquestioning support of his relations with his gentle twin; the day before, after a long moment’s reflection, the sprightly elf had pounced on them and sung them heralds for hours anon. He had been almost too-easily drawn into their reluctant dissimulation before their fathers, noting with typical candor that they must be carefully broken in and praising their plan for co-habitation. Since that climactic revelation, he had been unconscionably courtly with them; insisting on hearing even the most blush-inducing incidents of their awkward shuffle towards togetherness, teasing them incessantly about the other lover’s prowess, and allowing them ample private time to indulge themselves awhile. 

Indeed, citing an impulse to explore an islet far to the south, he had departed at dawn the day before and returned in early afternoon, allowing them ample time for a slow, sensuous coupling on the beach, as the tide crashed over them. He had been equally forgiving that night, when, after another bottle or two of Forochel, Echoriath could not seem to keep his tongue out of Tathren’s wine-soured mouth, drinking most of his share directly from the golden elf’s crimson lips. After Tathren’s red-cheeked apologies – Echoriath had been far too intoxicated to give proper care - Talion had declared himself heartened by their obvious mutual adoration and had begged that they not strive to conceal these necessary affections on his account. He would draw the line at actual petting, of course, but kissing and groping were expected, and easily tolerated. The requisite restraint would need be vigilantly kept at home, he had reasoned, so here at the shore they should love freely. 

Unfortunately, despite Cuthalion’s after-midnight offer of the tent while he himself slept beneath the bountiful elen, Echoriath had sunk like a stone in his arms and was of no decent use to him, except as the most luxurious of pillows. This was the concession of Talion’s he most cherished; that he could hold tight to his beloved in the night, as he had every night since the beginning of their togetherness. Only their first at the shore had he necessarily kept away, a tortured half-sleep he was not soon eager to repeat, unless under abject need for secrecy. 

In truth, he dreaded their revelation to their fathers, for this reason of far too many.

As he downed the last of the broth, he remembered another, more timely revelation that had yet to be broached between Echoriath and he. The darkling elf had stood fast before his other half – such vaultless courage, his tender one was possessed of – and declared his love, to brother and to lover both. Tathren, concerned for Cuthalion’s mind-state, had not wanted to fall into a bevy of troths just as the silver elf was recovering his senses, so had refrained from his own, equally heartfelt vows. This postponement had delayed them indefinitely, however, as no moment seemed fitting enough to properly, emphatically swear himself. Echoriath’s patience, in this of all things, had been ridiculously blithe, but he knew his bashful elf was pricked by his reserve and had possibly begun to doubt him. Indeed, no little part of Echo’s own pronouncement had confused him some, since he had said ‘ever’ before confirming his love. He had “ever-loved” him, but how? As cousin? As heart’s brother? As…

“Go to him,” Cuthalion all but commanded, his quicksilver eyes at once mercurial and imperious. “Or can you not, after these long weeks, discern that he awaits you?” 

“How…?” Tathren bleated in surprise. 

“Have you learned nothing in his bed?” Talion almost reprimanded, the spark in his eyes now fired to full flame. “Diligence. Efficacy. Synchronicity. A confluence of events, based on equal parts observation and intuition. Has he truly never lectured on the rhythm and flux of the natural world?” 

“There is often little discussion,” Tathren sheepishly admitted. “Merely… sensation. Though he has taught me much of glass-blowing.”

“Indeed,” his cousin snorted, ignoring the obvious taunt and pressing on. “I myself could not begin to explain the theory, but to say this: he is too keen an observer to miss your lately ruminations over some matter of import; as such, he has cunningly whisked himself away to the very spot in which your barely nascent affections took shape, in hopes of rousing some further declaration. If you mark his sketch pad, you will even note that he but shades in the very same anemone once outlined. He would not dare tempt fate by drawing a new one.” After rising, he added. “Superstitious, as well, but rather agreeably so.” With an ample intake of breath, he turned in the direction of their grazing horses. “Fret not, I will strike the camp. Now *go*.” 

After freshening his mouth with some mint and washing the film of sleep from his skin, Tathren made his way over the scoured rocks and gnarled sprigs of coral, to the end of the jutting shelf. As he approached, he indeed marked the very same anemone-fountain sketch as before, now enlivened by shade and color. More poignantly, he noted how Echo’s velvet-soft lengths of ebony hair sparkled with a crystalline iridescence under Arien’s most luminous rays, how his sveltely muscled back was clenched with tension, how the dust from the colored pencils stained his lissome hands, which had so reverently caressed his face that very morn, before collecting his wares and leaving their tent. He did not know whether to crouch down beside him or beckon him to stand, what pose would best be recalled a milliard times, when his Echo thought on the moment he had declared his love. 

He hoped the memory would always be heartwarming to him. 

“I have never seen such colors before,” he murmured, low enough to either draw his cousin’s attention or provoke him to stand in greeting. Echoriath set his pad aside and stood, offering a hand to help him over the last of the coral. Tathren’s own were soon tainted with the strange, phosphorescent greens, pinks, and haunting blues of the deep. “They glow, as the very creature that inspired them.” 

“A simple matter of mixing certain minerals into the chalk,” Echoriath explained, bending to wash both his hands, then Tathren’s, by cupping some water from the wading pool. 

Tathren simultaneously caught up his nimble fingers and met his burnished eyes. “Even the most unfathomable wonders seem but putty in your capable hands.”

“Your goodly and beauteous self, for instance,” Echoriath teased, as he leaned in for a lingering kiss. “Truly an unfathomable wonder of this great world.” 

“Are my charms so very mysterious?” Tathren goaded, but took the chance to enveloped him with steady arms. “Even after knowing me so intimately?” 

“I hope there will always be some elusive quality to your affecting allure,” Echo commented. “Though the true mystery will remain how I came to draw the regard of such a one as you, meleth.” 

“As most creatures that come to mate,” Tathren related fondly. “By showing me the vast palette of your most rich and plentiful colors, lirimaer. More luminous than all the phosphors in the sea, more bedazzling than the silmaril itself.” He kissed him, then, hard and intent, before breaking away to beam so blazingly at him that Echoriath thought he might burn to cinder. “I love you, my Echo.” 

“As I do you, melethron,” he vowed anew, too overcome to aught but whisper. 

They did not kiss again immediately, but touched and petted, gently, worshipfully, embracing in every way but the meeting of their lips. When the moment came, their mouths were slow to fully mate, laving with tender tongues before delving deeply, hotly, into such gorgeous bliss both were soon locked in a thrall of passion. 

At a gull’s shrill cry, Tathren broke away, afraid if their caresses progressed too far he would end up ravaging Echoriath on the coarse, scraping rock. Better he bear the discomfort of desire restrained, of the incipient ride home, than have his beloved’s backside rawed by carelessness. Echo seemed equally mindful, reasonable, though he melted amorously against him and gazed out over the sea, as if to savor every drop of the moment’s inherent romanticism. 

“Tell me, beauty,” Tathren asked into the crown of his hair. “For I have been piqued for days, now. When you proved yourself to Cuthalion, after our revelation…”

“As long as I have known what it is to love,” he anticipated the question with effortless acuity. “You have been the virtuous and unwavering object of my… ever, tathrelasse, ever have I loved you.” 

“As a cousin first, you loved me,” he amended.

“Perhaps,” Echoriath indulged him, worried that he might become overwhelmed. “The first knowledge of it dawned with my… my capacity for physical need, for desire and its release. It was my… thirty-seventh or thirty-eighth year, I cannot justly recall.” Tathren adjusted their position so his face was clearly beheld, by his probing eyes he would have the toll of it. “You had lately returned to Ithilien with your Adar, and perhaps a week after your departure, I began to… to *ache* for you, in a manner I had never known before. In times of solitude I would be gripped by a visceral loneliness, it was the only time in my life I sought so fervently to be in pleasant company, that I might forget… Over time, those feelings tamed themselves, but for the decade before my first majority, they proved agonizing, as every feeling is in those clumsy, blundering years of the body’s revolt into adulthood. Yet the midnight dreams of you, first of sensations I could not comprehend, then, after some of Cuthalion’s teaching, ones I understood all too well and thought desperately shameful, these would not abate. Even in your very presence, when my spirit was heartened by a cousin’s care for my well being. By the time we sailed for Valinor, I knew, else I very well might have stayed on with my naneth. I loved you, and not as a cousin should.” 

Dully sobered by his remembrances, Tathren fell silent. Slowly, hesitantly, a gentle smile crept over his pensive face. 

“And the dreams?” he smirked, not without mischief. “Have they since abated? Or do you still desire me, even in deepest slumber, my hands smoothing over your parched skin, my tongue teasing a peaked nipple-” 

Echoriath swatted his buttocks, but grinned bashfully. “They are but more vividly hewn. And when I wake… your radiance is there to behold. At my mercy, it is.” 

“Indeed,” Tathren chuckled, but could not help a smirk of satisfaction. “But truly, melethron, it pains me to know how longly you suffered, how my very presence must have provoked your solitary ways…” 

“Do not think on it,” Echoriath reassured him. “I suffer no longer, nor did I too acutely after my first majority. I imagine, if it were not you, I would have pined after some other elf. It is my nature, as are my solitary ways, as you call them.” 

Tathren’s eyes went wide, with guilt and with realization. “Your first majority! Valar, did you want me even then? Am I the reason you refused majority rites? Did I… somehow rebuke you? Why did you not…?” 

“My, we are prideful, this day,” Echoriath chided him, more amused than scornful. “One mere mention of my vigilant love, and already such liberties are taken with reality, such distortions...” He pecked Tathren on his moue of a mouth and elaborated on that fraught time. “I wanted you, true, but I was too… afeared, of my desire, of how it might rage, of coupling itself, to conscience any act or rite of physical love. Not until this last decade have I truly become… acclimated, to the idea. Fret not, meleth. And, if I recall, you were by no means free to accommodate me.” 

“Nay, I remember now,” Tathren mused. “My two-year of naivety among the Gondorian vipers and grave miscalculation at court.” 

“Eldarion weathered it well,” the darkling elf noted. “His grief for his fallen wife passed gently. He indulged himself, purely, for his brief time with you. He married again. What ill truly came of it, other than a few white hairs for our kingly uncle, of which he was already quite plentiful?” 

“Little, in the end, save the scolding of my youth,” Tathren laughed at himself. “Worse than when I stole in to see you born. Deservedly so.” 

With another, too-ravenous kiss for thought of their impending departure, Echoriath dismissed the gray past with a swipe of his singeing tongue. 

“Forget what’s gone, meleth, laid to rest on a faraway shore,” he advised him. “This time is ours. It is our honey-time, before fathers, families, and other forces seek to wedge themselves between us. I will ever cling to you, as a drowning elf to a fallen bough, when the time comes, but for now let us concentrate on… on ripening each moment until we are swollen tight with bliss, until we are verily fit to burst.” 

“How did you come to be so wise?” Tathren wondered aloud, as he laced his hold even tighter.

“Dilligence,” Echo began to list. “Efficacy. Synchronicity. A confluence of events, based on equal parts observation and intuition. Have I never related my theory on the rhythm and flux of the natural world?” 

“Never,” Tathren encouraged him, taking his too-willing mouth yet another time. “Bless me, melethron, with every glorious point of your reckoning…”

 

End of Part Seven


	8. Part 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The twins celebrate their 100th begetting day.

Part Eight

If the fire scalded, he would have swiftly withdrawn, like a hare from the fox’s fangs. 

Yet this flame did not burn, but balmed; its ethereal source wafting, as sunlight over somnambulant meadows, heartening, as blanket folds on a winter’s night, not singeing, as the crack of a hearth. Though the flush length of his skin did, indeed, broil as if steam-cooked, though every clutch seared him and every thrust stoked, with every deeping penetration of Echoriath’s slow-burn lovemaking, the crowning flames of his immortal soul expanded like the petals of a dawning rose and further bloomed into rapture. When Echoriath made patient, painstaking love to him, as on this tippling spring morn, he felt his very heart growing, blossoming, veritably flourishing into the most gracious and lush of his organs. 

Even swept up in his own concomitant thrall, Echoriath’s nurturing embrace accommodated his beloved’s every swoon, every writhe, the billow and cinch of their undulating bodies mirroring the melding of their soul flames. After nearly eight months of togetherness, of nightly joining in unrepentant ecstasy, the feeling that flowed between them was of such potency, the need to fuse their fires so obstinate in its stealthy urgings, that Tathren often feared they might inadvertently bind. When first arrived in Valinor, his grandsire had forewarned him that here, in the shade of Taniquetil, the Valar took ritual performance of love relations as an unspoken vow between two of their star children. Beneath the sacred eyes of Iluvatar himself, on the shores of his blessed realm, two of valorous intentions need not always literally pledge their love to be bound; already there had been several cases of green elves, in the first rush of known love, accidentally unifying their effulgent fea.

As Echoriath pushed his wrought tumescence into molten depths and their adoring gazes mated anew, a razing yet immaculate heat engulfed him, body and soul. The vulnerability of his position made the ultimate consummation doubly hard to resist, the luring bliss of oneness nearly inseparable, to his besotted senses, from the satiation of release. Every climax Echo roused from him, in these last weeks, had edged his corroding battlements closer to collapse; every prod of his hips seemed to gouge a chunk from his resolve. Doting, voluptuous lips descended on his, culling from his mouth with undisguised reverence, such that Tathren could no longer stave off the feral flood of completion and subsequently unleashed himself. Eyes pregnant with worshipful contemplation watched his wicked end, then, with a sultry sigh, his lover finished within him. 

Regret, and eventual relief, seized him, as the aura of the darkling elf’s fea dissipated into the otherworldly ether. His own waned such that he felt a biting chill, until Echoriath pressed hotly to him, soft lips dabbing his face with soothing kisses. 

Only then did Tathren sense how he was weeping.

He sharply called his mind to the present, berated himself for worrying Echo with undoubtedly misinterpreted emotion. Whispering assurances into his neck, he allowed his giving lover to hold him, coddle him some; not that Tathren begrudged his sweet attentions. In two days, their allotted honey-time would take its own sojourn, perhaps end entirely, as Echoriath would celebrate his second majority and, the following afternoon, they would reveal themselves to each pair of fathers, in turn. Though the plotting of this vital maneuver had preoccupied them for some months, Tathren yet debated its potentially fractious outcome within himself. They had not meant to tarry their declaration so long, but Cuthalion had, on their journey back from the shore so many months ago, championed the merits of postponing until their second majority struck. Upon reflection, Echoriath himself felt this the most reasonable course of action, and Tathren was in no position to counter the wishes of the very heart he sought to protect. 

His quicksilver cousin’s intuition had proved dearly accurate, as evidenced by their father’s strange reactions to the announcement of their co-habitation. Both sets of parents had sung a similar, grating tune: Elladan and Glorfindel had cited Echoriath’s need for independence, Legolas and Elrohir had wondered if their nephew might not regress some under too cloying care. Neither couple had denied them outright, but their frequent, unheralded visits in those first months bordered on unseemly. Cuthalion had assured them that none suspected the truth of their relationship, but they had nevertheless remained studiously vigilant. Tathren felt instinctively that, upon revelation, his own fathers would cause the most friction; even with Echo’s second majority passed, they would question his readiness for such an involved commitment. In truth, Tathren had yet to discover the turn of phrase or keenly crafted argument that might convince them, though he was himself fervently convinced of their rightness, of their belonging together. 

His dear one would know just how completely, upon the eve of the coming revels. 

Said comely elf kissed him now, sweet as a honeycomb, then examined his face for signs of disquiet. As was his usual routine since the completion of their apartments, Echoriath had woken early to water and feed the budding flower beds of the various gardens he kept, then returned home to break fast with him. This morn, however, a chipped pot of jam had led Tathren to dump the preserve in a saucer. This caused the unmingled juices to rise and to spill over the brim, then over his hands, which Echo saucily took upon himself to lap clean, leading them to sloppy, lecherous kisses, a fumble over to the chaise-longue, and the meticulous seduction of his newly bare flesh. Despite repeated trials, Tathren found he could not be taken too lustily by an elf of Echoriath’s unparalleled breadth and length, lest he bruise to abundant bleeding. Echo, though a lover of implicit skill, eventually became so disturbed, and Tathren admittedly unwilling to suffer further essays, that his taking was from then on a languorous, sensual affair that stretched on for hours of passionate love-play. Neither elf came to mind this in the least, especially on such a radiant spring morn, in the splendorous common room of their home. 

The morning, however, had drifted off and noon was now upon them. Muffled voices from the glass terrace announced Elladan, who, in an effort to spend more time with his busy sons, had lately taken to lunching with them every week or so. This, to Tathren’s chagrin, was just such a day. He crushed a kiss to his beloved’s pouting mouth, then sprung up, only belatedly remembering how thoroughly he’d just been pierced. No time, however, remained for aught but the furious fastening of Echoriath’s breech-laces and the straightening of his braids, as a knock sounded on the pane of the terrace door. Locks, once unknown to the elfkind of Valinor, had been a useful innovation in the apartment’s design, more than once saving them from the ruin of interruption. 

After Echo stole a last embrace, Tathren hurried off to his bedchamber, in pressing need of a washcloth and decent raiment. Though they hardly paraded around the talan unclothed, he’d lost his shirt and sarong to his lover’s rabid hands; the embroidered cloth of his sarong was salvageable, but the shirt shards would be donated, as ever, to his grandmother’s patchwork quilts. In recompense, however, she might very well fashion him a new tunic, as barter was one of her greatest joys. Once groomed and attired as befits a warrior of his rank, he separately wrapped five sachets of gold coins in each of the shirt pieces, then carefully lowered them into the bottom of his quiver, mindful that they would not clink as he walked. He scavenged a bunch worth of broken arrows from the kindling by the hearth, shaved splintering ends off clean, then filled the last of the quiver, to properly conceal his monies. This afternoon would see the completion of an imperative and expensive errand, one even his gentle beloved could not know of. In this, he was aided even by their bodies’ complicity, as they frequented Echoriath’s bedchamber most nights, his own more of a closet and a storeroom than a resting place. Echo had virtually no cause to venture in; as such, Tathren had stealthily saved up his wares and amassed his considerable sum in barely six months time. In truth, he’d been squirreling away for a majority gift even before their relations; once found, selected, and cowered away, the adventurer had set sights on grander quarry. 

Yet he’d wasted time enough in deliberation. Action beckoned.

First, however, came duty, and no little feint at dissimulation, of both father and too-lovely son. Packed, ‘armed’, and readied, Tathren sauntered back into the common room, where Elladan, Glorfindel, and Cuthalion were gathered at table, while Echoriath draped a cloth over some garments he apparently wished to conceal. 

“Well met, uncles,” Tathren bowed in deference to them, not wanting to disturb their meal with an embrace. “Cousin.” 

“Tathren,” Talion surreptitiously winked, to burn him. Which he did. Elladan, oblivious, nodded his greeting, mouth full of mead. 

“Ah, well met, brave one,” Glorfindel smiled at him. “I saw some of your compatriots down at the fields, this morn. I wondered at your absence.” 

“Echo has introduced me to the histories of Losgereth,” he answered warmly. “Twas a late hour before I could exorcise the details of those fiery battles. Dagor Bragollach. Nirnaeth Arrnoediad. I was veritably breath-stolen by his vivid recounting.”

“He exaggerates the cunning of Barahir at the Pass of Sirion,” Glorfindel remarked. “But, aye, his rendering of Hador is too acute. One of the most skilled warriors of the edain, even in such treacherous times. Thank the Valar his valiant son Galdor took up the charge, else Elrond and Elros may never have been begot, and I would be eternally poorer for it.” With a playful smile, he caught up his husband’s hand and kissed it soundly. “Indeed, the halo of his golden hair was such that he was oft rumored a peredhil of my very own siring. Who knows how the tides of fate may have turned, had that proven so.” Elladan chuckled softly at this, but the younger elves gaped in wonder. 

“You *lived* those battles, Ada?” Cuthalion inquired, mindful of distressing his father, who too often fell prey to those vicious memories. 

“I fought them, ioneth,” the golden elf informed him. “And not always on victory’s side.” 

“So much you have yet to teach us, Ada,” Echoriath reflected, kissing his father’s crown from behind before taking his place at the table. Glorfindel, touched by the affection, squeezed his little one’s hand. “Perhaps you yourself should take up the quill.” 

“He should indeed,” Elladan seconded, ever-proud of his mate’s glorious renown.

Glorfindel, however, ignored this pointed remark, preferring to praise his sage youngest. “So tender still, but so wise of heart. Promise me, pen-neth, that you will always regard the world with some measure of awe, some interest, some fascination.”

“How could I fail to?” Echoriath answered him enthusiastically. “Even this blessed realm is so vast, so uncharted… indeed…” His eyes flicked, then, to Tathren, who leaned a moment against a nearby wall, knowing implicitly what subject was then to be broached. “Adar, I… I have a secret to impart to you. I hope you might be pleased.”

“A secret?” Elladan raised a brow, unamused by such light talk of deceit. “How now?” 

Despite his obvious nervousness, Echoriath soldiered on with considerably more maturity than he might have, once upon a time. 

“Since his return from adventuring,” he began. “Tathren and I have had an agreement… a trade, of sorts. A trade of knowledge, of talents. I have enlightened him on certain lore, recommending books and such, and he has… he has tutored me in the skills required to be a successful… an explorer. To go adventuring. I would… I would depart, with the company, when they next take leave.” 

Rather than the expected protests, both fathers seemed deeply impressed with this turn of events. 

“Echo,” Glorfindel was first to congratulate him. “But this is wondrous news. We are… certainly…”

“Shocked,” Elladan finished for him. Predictably, he was the more moved of the two, as well as the more considerate of his son’s readiness and well being. “Aye, this does come as… as some surprise, to say the least, but… there have been rumblings at Council of late.” 

“They say ten more ships sail from the Havens at summer’s blooms,” Cuthalion related to them, with some resentment. “Thorontir pressed me on it yestereve, thinking I had heard news from my father, the *Lord*.” 

“You may inform him that your father, the Lord, has no definite news,” Elladan chuckled at his grumpy son. 

“Yet your less-informed father, the Balrog-slayer,” Glorfindel snorted. “Who was guard-captain to Lord Elrond of Imladris some five millennia, but who has not yet been cautioned by his ruling hand, in this, believes said grandsire of yorn will not wait long on action. Mark my words, the commission for new colonies will be announced within the month and the explorers well gone by midsummer.” His sterling blues eyes shone on Echoriath, as if in unspoken challenge. “The question is, will you, my brave one, be suitably prepared to accompany them?” 

“He is already prepared, more than suitably,” Tathren replied, from behind. “And a welcome member of the company, by their word. The commission would most certainly be his, as would be the choice of whether to stay or go.” 

Unable to completely mask his desolation, Echoriath turned to meet his steady eyes. “And you are sworn to stay. I had counted on… I had not thought the choice would come so quick upon me…” 

“Peaceful times bring their own unforeseen trials,” Elladan noted gently, not encouraged by the manner in which Echoriath seemed to require his cousin’s accompaniment. Yet, he reminded himself, just a few short months ago, his son would not have willingly left Telperion, let alone the region entire, without a tantrum of epic proportions, such was his fear. And would he himself, as parent, not be relieved at Tathren’s supportive presence on this first journey? “But if you speak of his pledge to my brother and his mate… I do not doubt they will see the import of such a task, if carefully weaned to the idea of your departure, Tathren.” 

To his never-ending surprise, Echoriath instantly devised a cunning remedy: “Might you not aid them in this regard, Ada? Smooth things over with Ada-Hir, if he takes badly to the notion?” 

“We will both do what we may, ioneth-nin,” Glorfindel assured him, foisting a meaningful look at his hesitant husband. “I, for one, am terribly proud of your courage, in even speaking of such an undertaking.” Unable to control his revolting tongue, Elladan merely took rather tender hold of his son’s other arm.

Afraid his father might turn maudlin and aversely affect his brother, Cuthalion piped up: “Now, will you not show Tathren the magnificent raiment grandmother has fashioned for our begetting-day revels?” Though he saved his father’s face with the one hand, the slippery silver elf still managed to taunt with the other. 

At Echo’s gasp of protest, Tathren shot Talion a stare that would singe stone.

“Nay,” the darkling elf objected, his tone too sharp by far. “I would that… that no other see it…” 

“But we have all admired its finery, ioneth,” Elladan urged him. “Why not your cousin?” 

“I would have some admiration left for my begetting day,” Echoriath covered weakly, then more convincingly. “If only for the strength to wear such… such a lovely thing…” 

“And I have an errand that has yet waited too long,” Tathren announced, to rescue him. Praying, inwardly, that a seed had not been planted in all this idle talk. “Its purport for just such a begetting-eve.” He smirked mysteriously at both cousins in turn, to ward off the scent of favoritism, but there was only one who’s eyes sparked with curiosity. 

“A gift?” Echoriath smiled enticingly, hoping to draw him out. “But surely we are too aged, now, for such pleasantries.” 

“Speak for yourself,” Cuthalion repliqued, saving them in earnest this time. “If gifts are in the offering, I have need of hunting knife. My hilt is cracked.” 

“Hunting knife?!” Tathren scoffed. “Save such easy charms for your starry-eyed maidens. I stalk more elusive prey than that.” He bowed again, sure now that his uncles’ minds had been diverted, but unable to resist a final jibe at his cousin. “A shield, perhaps an arrow or two. No dwarves, alas, to solder something fine.” 

With that, he swept away, his anxious heart thundering like a tempest.

**************************************

When he returned with a steaming pot of tea, Elrohir spied his haloed mate on the sunlight divan, looking innocent as a lamb in the springtime splendor, and smirked salaciously. 

As in questing days of old, he’d laid the trap with cunning precision. Legolas, however, knew all of his feints and ruses too well to be entirely convinced; there was as much chance that he’d been willingly caught as skillfully lured into the trap. Yet Elrohir’s advantage was in his psychological acuity; a trait at which, out of the wilds, he repeatedly, masterfully outwitted his too-noble husband. A diplomat’s reserve could prove deliciously useful, where seduction was concerned. 

Though the clay teapot stung some, he held immovable position at the entranceway, poised and raptly observant. His devising had begun early that morn, when Legolas had informed him that his schedule was clear for the afternoon, would Elrohir not like to engage in some rousing debate? Arousal had, indeed, been the elf-knight’s principal thought on the matter. Though he knew how Legolas had come to enjoy the intellectual stimulation of their debates – as, let it be said, he well did – he also was not oblivious to the relentless efforts his beloved had made to accommodate his periods of fever, to assuage his pain, to richen their marital bonds, and to generally treat him in the most exceptionally loving manner. Elrohir, whenever possible, had banished whatever preoccupied him – be it physical or rational – and taken up the challenge on his own side. 

His feverish tendencies had ebbed and flowed since the summer, as they took their time searching for, selecting, and eventually befriending a suitable mother for their child. They had yet, however, to even meet an elf they liked and admired, so Elrohir continued to consume the draught each morn, in times of high tide. Such as the present circumstance. His unquenchable desires had struck with a vengeance week last, which had the unfortunate effect of making some of their coupling more routine and himself desperately needful of strict attention. As such, Legolas was not so much neglected, as some of his more gentle preferences set aside. 

Preferences Elrohir was determined that he not forgo completely, certainly not due to his own shortcomings. 

With the draught in its full, noontime effect, he would not be able to take pleasure. Legolas’ body, however, was in no way so restricted, and so Elrohir’s elf-snare was, early that morn, laid out. When Legolas had come to call him to luncheon, he’d started, then attempted to surreptitiously/glaringly conceal the document he composed, with just enough of a blush to pique him. His husband had not been so foolish as to inquire as to its contents, though by the swiftness with which Elrohir had sprung up and the shivers that ran through him when he clutched Legolas’ arm – with just enough force to give him pause – the archer had essayed a glance back at the desk. Afterwards, as they wandered into the study for their debate, Elrohir had begged a moment to order his papers, using the old feint of concealing the most secret documents out in the open, which he knew Legolas was too-well readied for. Indeed, as he shuffled, flipped, and piled, those keen aquamarine eyes never lost sight of the telltale parchment. 

The instant before he’d dropped it atop the highest pile, just as he’d predicted, the first telltale inquiry had come. 

“Tell me, meleth,” Legolas had asked him, with such nonchalance his stealth-teacher would have wept from pride. Elrohir could have practically spoke the next words in time with him. “When I came upon you before… what manner of letter were you composing?”

“Why do you ask?” Elrohir had queried in return, with just enough hesitation to convince him of repressed anxiety. “Twas but a trifle.” 

“You colored some,” he had noted, so casually Elrohir almost laughed aloud. “I fleetingly wondered what tedious matter of government might cause a diplomat of your esteem to… to blush. It is almost… unbelievable.” 

Elrohir had worried some at that last remark, afraid he’d been found out, but the concern Legolas struggled to veil was too genuine to doubt. The elf-knight had schooled himself not to smirk, but he struggled in turn to stave it off now. Legolas had never expressed any overt jealously of another, but there had been moments when an expressive elf in their acquaintance had pushed too far beyond the boundaries for his liking and his eyes had reflected a cool, green light, until the moment passed and the elf in question backed off, in fear of his own fertility. The thought of this faint possessive streak pricked Elrohir such that he bemoaned how he could not enjoy the fruits of his own devising, along with, or after, his deserving mate. Cursed draught. 

Focusing on the manipulation at hand, he feigned at keeping yet another blush from his budding cheeks. Legolas was now doubly convinced of his sincerity. 

“After our harsh winter,” he detailed bashfully. “The members of the Council have turned their minds to spring. There are a few matters for our immediate concern, but not enough to keep me occupied the day long. I… I have had, in my mind, for some time, to… to attempt to compose a verse or two. As I say, tis but a whim of mine…” In truth, Elrohir had for some months turned his hand to composition, of songs, poems, and prose works, and had well-hewn his pen. He was confident enough in his skill to craft some more personal work, in the manner of the celebrated bard of erotic fictions Ithimithiel, for both his and Legolas’ private enjoyment. It was one such a tale he bated his mate with, now. “…I am still somewhat green at the craft.” 

“I do not wish to intrude upon your leisure time,” Legolas had rather diplomatically phrased his request, which Elrohir had not for a moment doubted would come next. “But might a doting husband ever be allowed to read some of this fine work.” 

“You have not read a word,” Elrohir had whispered.” How can you judge it fine?” Before Legolas could answer with the usual assurances, he had jumped in. “And before you tediously say that the verses stem from my pen and therefore cannot be aught but fine, please know that the tale is not yet complete, or even near polished enough for consumption. If my work is to be enjoyed by one so dear as you, Legolas, I would have it be readied.” 

“And when the tales are readied, might I enjoy them?” Legolas had asked with such soft affection, Elrohir knew he had him wholly snared. 

“For certes, melethron,” he’d agreed with exquisite tremulousness, as if to placate him. 

Legolas had smiled softly, his admiration too plain. Elrohir had pretended to be provoked, and had muttered some excuses about fetching the tea. He’d barely swept from the room, when he heard the rustle of fresh-cut parchment. 

His avid-eyed husband now displayed a scarlet flush of his own, as he devoured the hot-blooded tale. At the end of a particularly affecting paragraph, Legolas leaned back into the cushions and adjusted his hips in a gesture only a longtime lover could discern; the deliberate bulging of material at the front of his breeches to conceal his budding erection. Though somewhere in the back of his mind, Legolas must be warning himself of his husband’s incipient return, the weaving of the tawdry tale was such that he could not tare his eyes away, though with every passing phrase his nerves sparked, his arousal quickened. He was soon veritably sprawled back over the divan, no amount of loose material able to hide the hefty shaft that prodded up, testing the stretch capacity of the cloth to its limits. 

Elrohir, pleased to distraction, was ready to pounce. 

Instead, however, he slinked across the floor, deposited the teapot on the waytable, and eased onto the divan without even a waft of air fluttering the pages. He lingered, motionless, beside his husband awhile, observing the minutiae of his absorption. Truly, he’d never dreamed he’d be this enthralled. The structure of the tale itself was of little complexity; it was the detail and meticulous description of the loving, he expected, that wooed so rapaciously. That the playing out of the characters’ coupling was vaguely reminiscent of one of their more prolonged and cherished sessions of love-play, complete with Legolas’ most timidly requested acts, doubtlessly improved his fascination triple-fold. 

And, my, but he was summarily engrossed! Legolas’ pink lips were parted but a fraction, his tongue, a slip of berry red, perched on the bottom edge of his teeth. His breath came fitfully, in a string of hush, airy gasps, his chest rising and falling in greater frequency with each sultry paragraph. He lay lazily, but was wound tight, shaken, every moment or so, by tremors of mounting sensation. The hand that did not clasp the parchment sheets was set on his abdomen, fingers inching towards his groin, only to be reluctantly eased away to turn another page. He swallowed, suddenly, then cleared his throat. His eyes shut in a vain attempt to restrain himself, to behave honorably and replace his husband’s work on the desk, but his mind could not ignore the images painted there by such suggestive words, the molten recollections the tale remembered him. He essayed a few, restorative inhalations, but some fiendish remnants of Elrohir’s innate musk had mixed with the static air of the study and the battle was lost before even begun.

Only when his eyes flew open and plunged back into the pages, did he notice the hand tucked into his thigh, poised to palm the engorgement he should be trying to soften. Plump, ready lips bent to tease under his ear, suckle his neck, Legolas thought he might find glorious end at the mere ghosting of tongue over his leaf-shaped lobe. The stealthy hand batted his own away, exposed his navel, and began to brush slow, merciless circles over the wisps of down there. 

“Forgive me, melethron,” the archer begged, though he desperate wanted to keen ‘touch me’, instead. “I know it is unfinished… that you forbade me…” 

“The lone unfinished thing in my perception, beauteous one,” Elrohir purred against his throat. “Is *you*.” The elf-knight plucked the breech-laces open as nimbly as a virtuoso at the violin, then snuck his hand within and gripped his wrought love. 

Legolas cried out, so enflamed was he. 

As that too talented mouth liberally maimed his open collar, he bleat: “Saes, Elrohir, it is not remotely just that I… let me take… my own… as you cannot… ah, *Elbereth*!!” 

A particularly skilled stroke had him arching up into the darkling elf’s hand, though he fought yet to stay his wanton hips, to not insult his presently impotent beloved. Elrohir set a daunting rhythm, one even Legolas could not extricate himself from, not that any honest part of him desired to, excepting his rapidly fading reason. Elrohir kissed him, once, hotly, then gestured towards his manuscript. 

“My gift to you this day, maltaren-nin,” he murmured sweetly. “You have indulged my wares a hundred fold these last months, Legolas. Indulge yourself, melethron. Read on.” 

With a heartened smile, Legolas gave in to his husband’s seductions and took up the page. Once further engaged, the archer’s cheeks near incendiary and his incandescent eyes hooked in, Elrohir surreptitiously lowered himself to his knees, Legolas’ breeches in turn, then lapped tauntingly at his slick, swollen length. The golden elf threw his head back as his entire body writhed, a desperate moan breaking from deep within. He struggled to keep the parchment aright, to control his chest-quaking pants as he was licked, laved, and feverishly fondled, his husband deploying every weapon in his vast, learned arsenal to thoroughly undo him. 

When Elrohir finally took him whole, he dropped the weighty pages in a flurry, his vision blurred by the pulses of visceral, raging ecstasy that coursed through him. Though the tale itself might ignite the very pages on which it was written, it little compared to the hazy sight of his darkling husband sucking him with abandon, so devoted to his sensuous task was he that Legolas could not imagine he derived no pleasure from it. Sundered in the quick by a last bolt of pure carnality, Legolas thrust up, howled, and blast into his mouth; his release so raising, so blazing, that he shivered with aftershocks for long minutes after. 

As Elrohir crawled up to cuddle with him, Legolas buried himself in the cushions, in his mate’s balming heat. 

“*Valar*, Elrohir,” he rasped, woozy to the point of disorientation. The pull of fatigue leadened every strained muscle of his limber frame, but he did, after all that, yet desire to converse with his mate. 

“Sleep awhile, meleth,” Elrohir whispered to him. “Replenish yourself, and dream of our bodies entwined. We will debate some upon your waking.” 

Already Legolas began to droop against him, when he groggily inquired: “Are there more tales such as… as that lovely one…? Might we… enjoy them… *together*…?” 

“Many more,” Elrohir assured him, caressing his sweaty brow with implicit tenderness. “Rest, Legolas.”

“You are… my very heart… Elrohir-nin,” he mumbled his last, then heavied in his husband’s vigilant arms. 

“As you are mine, melethron,” the elf-knight vowed, as he settled into their embrace. 

******************************************

Midway through the feast, the Hall of Fire on his grandsire’s resplendent estate was a veritable hive of activity. Black and yellow haired elves of the two noblest houses buzzed so vivaciously among the varnished, honey-toned tables, a dwarf might be forgiven for mistaking them a swarm of pollen-soused bees. The wax-paper banners that adorned the flying buttresses were hung too close to the chandeliers, in places; their drippings glazed down the rounded walls like sap down a tree trunk. Glow-lights, torches, and elegant candelabra imbued both the hall and the gardens beyond with a fairyland splendor, though nearly the entire, pixie populace of Telperion had gathered to celebrate the lordlings’ hundredth begetting-day. 

Adding to the frazzled, frivolous atmosphere were the many singletons flaunting their wares to the newly mature princes, their companions, or any other becoming elf that might pique their fancy. The Sons of Elrond and their mates were hardly the only elves to find themselves idle and offspring-less when the peacetime came. The westward passing of the elder generations had caused an unprecedented wave of reunions, bindings, and begetting such as Valinor had never suffered before. While new elflings were born almost weekly, those conceived in the first major wave were now grown to true majority and eager to establish their own lines of succession. 

Cuthalion himself was not ignorant to the advantages his esteemed heritage blessed him with, among the dulcet maids of Telperion. Having quit his grandsire’s table to frequent his adventurer fellows, he was only too willing to be lured away to dancing by some bold-hearted beauty. He would have his pick of skirts for the revels of early morn, though he would be more discerning than on his first majority. Having born witness these long months to his brother’s thoroughly besotting romance with his bravehearted cousin, he had often cause to ponder his own restless pursuits, only, once tumbled, to forget their softer merits and move on to the next rabid chase. His behavior, while not unusual in these times of relentless flirtation and overabundant selection, bordered on unseemly for one of such a lofty house. Though desire ever-reigned his waking thoughts, he would forgo outright lust for the gentilities of a love-affair. Indeed, he already had an emerald-eyed, tawny-maned, thoroughly ravishing slip of an elf-maid in mind. 

The trick of it was to remain aloof and let her come to him, as all, inevitably, did. 

If the object of his bashful brother’s own secret affections were not so glaringly obvious to his unveiled eyes, Cuthalion might even be envious of him. His graciousness did him no favors this spirited eve, as a veritable legion of maids and males alike sought his undivided attention. Much to the never-ending amusement of the adventurers’ table, Echoriath could not sit but a moment, nor take more than a sip of mead, before another apple-cheeked suitor, sodden with wine and sexy-eyed, begged a dance. The awkward elf had spent nearly the entire evening in the hands of lonelyhearts, honing his admittedly paltry dancing abilities and stuttering out passable conversation. His infallible honor was a bane this sultry night; he felt, as per tradition, that he could not dare refuse, if politely beckoned. His current, brief respite was pleaded of a sunny maid by Thorontir, ever protective of the youngest of his charges, who judged by Echoriath’s sallow countenance that one so unaccustomed to vigorous revelry should take nourishment before the assault began anew. 

To his infinite credit, Tathren had kept counsel rather gallantly, as his beloved was flattered, manhandled, and pried away from the sanctuary of their table. He bristled some, though imperceptibly, when a dashing ellon would present himself, but to the maids he gave no evidence of response or displeasure, even chuckling when a particularly lively lass elbowed-in to their rowdy conversation. He was smartly seated across the table from Echoriath, as any proximity threatened to reveal them; they had been, over the last month, perilously forgetful of their own secrecy, almost unconsciously drawn together when in company, such was their bliss. Indeed, when Echo finally took a breath of ease, the strain of distance was most apparent on his woeful face. He forsook Tathren’s guileless eyes, thankfully angled away from their parents’ view, deliberately seeking out other cares. His burnished eyes drifted over to the royal table, where their fathers, their uncles, and even their grandparents were tucked together in various stages of casual affection. He forced a smile when Elladan marked him, but to Cuthalion the feeling evoked within him was plain enough.

His cousin, however, could not decently conceal his appreciation of Echoriath’s lush countenance for any great length of time. His covetous eyes never longly left the willowy elf, rather divinely dressed in a midnight blue tunic with gold embroidery, dark hose, and dauntingly high boots. His clasped raven hair was treated with flaxweed, its lustrous sheen crowned by a mithril circlet that had once belonged to their grandsire’s mortal brother, Elros. From the moment his beaming eyes had taken in this vision, Tathren’s love had been writ, in epic form, across his own comely features, so awed had he been by his heart’s treasure. 

Cuthalion himself, if he could be so brazen, was no less becomingly attired in a violet hue with lilac trimmings, having been gifted Elrond’s own majority circlet by his teary-eyed grandmother. A lock of her silver hair twined his own; he had vowed, then, that his binding-mate would be no less ethereal, no less sweetly, than the blithe Celebrian herself.

Even one as swollen as he, however, had to admit that the true beauty of the night was Tathren himself. Clad in velour trousers, a leather vestment polished slick as obsidian, a black silk shirt of salacious cut, and steel-tipped boots of formidable craft, his blonde hair blazed like a pyre, the sheathes that spilled down his back as lithe as ‘scaped phoenix feathers. Echoriath must have tore his gaze away for pure modesty’s sake, as Tathren, poised with studied quietude on his stool, was no less than an effigy of smoldering sensuality. Even Cuthalion himself thought him irresistible. 

A thought then pricked him. Perhaps the moment to indulge his own curiosity had come, at last. Ever had he forbid himself the knowledge of what his brethren so ardently adored: his bedding at the hands of an ellon. Cuthalion had no designs on Tathren himself, of course, but there were many other, delectable charmers present, some so renown of skill that even one so green as he – and rare was the day that he could be judged an innocent in the loving arts – might be confident of pleasure. He had bedded long before his first majority, why not play the traditionalist on this second and be introduced to an aspect of physical love he’d little experience of? 

As he scouted the milling throngs for a suitably tempting distraction, his grandsire called him over with a quiet gesture. The fever on the dance floor had heightened considerably in the last hour; Cuthalion was sure the elders would soon spirit their mates away for more private celebrations, so he quickly slipped over to their goblet-strewn table. Upon further observation, the company was rather excellently merry. His own proud fathers were deep in their cups, almost indecently curled into Glorfindel’s high-backed chair. Celebrian was languorously draped over her throne-like seat, her tired feet ably massaged by her doting mate. Cuthalion had rarely seen his grandparents so unguarded; this simple, telling intimacy suited them. Elrohir and Legolas were almost desperately close, though not yet wholly entwined. Legolas leaned down, every now and again, to caress his husband’s cheek, crown, or peaked ear. The elders were, however, far too silent on the whole, which led Cuthalion to guess some mischief abounded. 

They were not, even after ages passed and wars unleashed, entirely sobered of their wiles. 

Cuthalion plunked himself down and regarded them drolly, his quicksilver eyes searching out their no doubt mercury-induced intent. Even when Elrond’s imperious eyes pinned him, he did not doubt his reasoning. 

“Tell me, young one,” Elrond inquired, with a Lord’s lofty tone. The resulting titters were far too gleeful for his liking. “Would you ever give a lie to your forefathers?” 

“Or foremother,” Celebrian almost yawned, so relaxed was she. 

“Nay,” Cuthalion pledged hesitantly. “In no dire instance or grievous circumstance would I even think on such an… an insult to you, grandsire. Nor my numerous Adar.” 

“That is well,” Glorfindel judged, his lips struggling to keep straight. 

“And will serve us well,” Elrohir smirked wryly, as Legolas, seemingly unimpressed by their gameliness, found the soft of his husband’s neck and settled there awhile. 

“We must confess, ioneth, to some hurt,” Elladan recounted, his own mouth tippling on the edge of mirth. “Your brother is a gentle elf, for certes, and as such has kept his bed-business a private affair. There is honor in this that you yourself might take note of, dear one. Yet he has loved with some worthy elf for months, now, and not even on the occasion of his hundredth begetting day does he see fit to introduce his sires to such a one! We are… rather disheartened, by the stricture of these measures.” 

“Ada, this is hardly the moment for revelation,” Cuthalion insisted. “Before the entire colony? Even I could not brave such a bold move.” 

“Nevertheless,” Elrond took up the slack. “We are verily insulted by his secrecy, Talion. As such, we have taken it upon ourselves to raptly observe his actions, this night, and therefore ferret out the identity of this one we are so… so grateful to.” 

“For his caring towards such a sweet one as our Echo,” Glorfindel seconded. “For his gallantry and honor.” 

“Yet this does not excuse the fact that you have schemed without my brother’s knowing!!” Cuthalion protested, unimpressed with his elders. “Or his allowance. Indeed, he would be scandalized by your behavior, wounded far more gravely than his groping attempts at privacy have hurt the lot of you.” 

“Now, now, my dear one,” Celebrian tempered him. “We only wish to share in your brother’s joy. To welcome this elf among us with proper care, as we would hope to greet any love of our beloved grandchildren. Curiosity may have consumed the better part of our reason, true, but we engage ourselves in playful banter, nin ind, no more.”

“Indeed, we got on this trail by another, of equally ignoble merit,” Elrohir chuckled at himself. “Tathren also keeps his lover away. Though, by my estimation, we have made a daring guess of that one’s identity.” 

“And the resulting wager dully set,” Elladan noted, his voice sharp with the challenge. 

/You would know your error by the light of his eyes,/ Cuthalion mused inwardly, but outwardly refused comment. 

“But you, my brave one, are the lynchpin,” Glorfindel informed him. “By your own statements this eve, you most certainly know the identity of both elves in question.” Cuthalion gasped at the betrayal he insinuated, but his father stayed him. “We ask not for answers, Talion, fear not. Merely… a clue.” 

“A…clue?” the silver elf considered, rather befuddled by what reply would honor both his allegiances. 

“Aye,” Elrond expounded, again taking on a lordly manner. “A riddle of your skilled devising, so as not to deliver an untruth to either fore-…fore-eldar or brethren.” 

With a harrowed sigh, Cuthalion long debated his fiendish predicament. If ever a lie was warranted, this was the case. Yet he was an elf of honor; the intentions of his elders, while equal parts misguided and inebriated, came from the heart. Could he not, with no little cunning, serve both masters, perhaps even easing the way for the impending revelation? In truth, he wondered at how they had not guessed themselves, so glaring was the answer in light of their reasoning. 

“Very well,” he finally announced, with considerable mischief himself. “I will say but this, and you must be satisfied.”

“Agreed,” the table sang, each coupled parted some and perched forward to best take in the clue. 

Cuthalion drew a bating breath, then replied: “The answer you seek is a matter of perspective, so simple it has been overlooked for months. I, myself, fell prey to this devising, and even when revealed to me, I would not have believed were it not for the evidence quite literally before my eyes. Merely shift your age-held view aloft, and you will see it clearly.” 

“But that is no help at all!” Glorfindel griped. 

“We have turned the matter over a thousand times since dinner,” Elrohir grumbled. “There is not an elf in the hall we have not looked on exactingly.” 

“I will say no more,” Cuthalion ended mysteriously, swallowing a smirk of his own. “But will alas leave you, to myself reap of the bounty here assembled.” With a pompous bow, he rose. “Till the morrow’s luncheon, then, Adar?” 

“Indeed,” Elladan glowered, then grinned at his own theatrics. “Enjoy your revels, dearest one.” 

Before Cuthalion could depart, a cry of pain broke through the hall. 

All eyes darted to the dance floor, where an imposing, though shamelessly drunken elf pawed at his flummoxed brother, who fought uselessly to free himself from the ogre’s caging arms. The gracious elf had been taking a step with a saucy Sindar maid – of Cuthalion’s buxom type – when this lecherous other had seized him for his own. All at the elder’s table were instantly on their feet, but stayed clenched with anxiety as the adventurers invaded the floor. His companions could aught but catch Echoriath and hold the crowd back, as Tathren jabbed the elf’s arms with such ferocity that some after thought they’d heard the bones crack, then slammed the unsightly creature to the floor and pricked a dagger-tip to his throat. The last vestiges of his self-control kept him from stabbing the blade in, though most would judge the pierce of his eyes by far the more trenchant of the two. After a pregnant moment, the elf spluttered an apology, to which Tathren launched him at the waiting Cirhith and Rohros, who dragged him brutishly out. The gaping assembly parted to accommodate them, as the music struck up again, the master of ceremonies eager to smooth over this interruption. 

By this time Echoriath was enclosed in Tathren’s arms, the golden elf making poor show of concealing his emotions. He did, however, have care to glance towards the table, where a soft look reassured their elders to their timid one’s well being. When Tathren led him to his seat, a communal sigh of relief sounded from his forefathers (and foremother), who returned to their own, oblivious to any deeper shading to their grandson’s adamant behavior. 

Indeed, Cuthalion had more than just cause to contemplate the recesses and resourcefulness of denial, when Glorfindel assured his mate: “His cousin will hearten him. See? Already they take leave to stroll in the gardens and replenish themselves with some fresh, vital air.” 

With a snort of exasperation, Cuthalion rolled his eyes, then left to indulge in some adventuring of his own. 

***

As he laxed his hold on Elrohir, who was presently entrenched in an avid debate with Elladan over a parent’s chore to espouse peacetime morals in their children’s teaching, Legolas still brimmed with repressed adrenaline. 

A warrior’s instincts were not easily unlearned, no matter what they imparted to their elflings. Not even a long draught of ale could temper him, his fingers slipping almost comically to the hilt of his concealed knife, only to be pulled away again by slowly dawning reason. He was yet wrung with the leonine energy of a hunter, a predator, poised but merciless. While the others dared not cluck their displeasure at Tathren’s cruel tactics – the result being too necessary to broach any real objection - Legolas bit back his overflow of pride at the potent elf his son had proved himself. Tathren rarely made show of the raw, Silvan blood that coursed through his veins, but tonight’s sharp protection of his cousin would have pleased, Legolas begrudgingly admitted to himself, even the notoriously harsh Thranduil. Though the archer was glad his son had never known the guilt, and thrill, of orc-slaying, his reaction time was deadly keen, a fact the adventurer’s father could find some measure of relief in. 

Earlier that evening, when their son clopped down from his apartments to join their party, Elrohir had gripped his arm in wonderment. Tathren took after his sire in his views on finery; even at formal gatherings, he was a humble elf at heart. Nature had adorned him well enough with radiance, he hardly needed compliment his visage with frippery. The tenacity of the growing love between Tathren and this unknown elf of his had been weightily brought home to Legolas, however, upon first sight of his son’s feral, almost wanton beauty; he had not known whether to glow with pride or reproach such a brazen display of sexuality. Only the modesty he evidenced in his carriage, his too-apparent discomfiture with his own enhancement, had convinced him to keep his tongue. That, and Elrohir’s too acute mentioning of past occasions when he himself had gone against his element and dressed to stealthily seduce. 

Yet never had he been more overwhelmed by the majesty of the child he had sired. If he accomplished naught else of worth in his long eternity, he had inadvertently made this beauteous, kindly, bravehearted one, and was somehow blessed with his worshipful regard. 

Legolas was suddenly seized by a near choking desire to praise the son from whom he had so recently been estranged, to take hold of his arms and tell him of his pride, as they walk through the somnambulant gardens of his grandsire’s estate. Echoriath, surely, was long swept away by his fretful lover – why else would they have so neatly escaped the hall, but to meet him in secret? He doubted Tathren would quit the feast without a word of courage to them, so why not quicken this assurance, allowing him and his own lover to take solace in the other’s arms. Indeed, with his own wrecked body still so charged, he would bid Tathren a brief goodnight and himself sneak Elrohir away for some spirited loving. 

With a telling clasp to his husband’s gesticulating arm, he took temporary leave. 

Despite the impending spring, the night was crisp, the moon but an emaciated crescent above them. The stark cast of starlight gave the gardens what little illumination there was; the petals, leaves, and trees about him shimmered with frosty brilliance. Though the shadows were as hollows in their blackness, as thieved swatches of a land quilted by cold, the air itself was comfortably warm, perfect for the pairs of lovers no doubt hidden at that very moment in the ghostly wood. Legolas gave heated thought to his own past escapades in the twilight forest, to his twilight husband most of all, then pressed on. 

He came upon them secreted under the bridge’s arch, the reflection off the greenhouse behind haloing their forms. Legolas slid behind a sturdy oak to observe them awhile, careful not to intrude on what might be a tense moment for the yet bashful elf. Echoriath still trembled with aftershocks from his violent encounter, though for the moment he backed away from Tathren’s consolation. 

“I am well, tathrelasse,” he rasped harshly, as if to convince himself. “I am not some skittish maid. I have known such… such a lusting touch. You know well I am no innocent.” 

“But only ever meant in earnest, my tender one,” Tathren insisted, clearly overwhelmed with concern at the young elf’s demeanor. “As I said before, any elf would have been shook by such a selfish act. If it was indeed accomplished, one might fade from the violation. None would fault you for admitting to weakness or to symptoms of grief.” 

“Elves can… can *fade*… from violation?” Echoriath seemed to strive to convince himself, holding himself against the cold only he felt. 

“Many did, during the kinslayings,” Tathren related to him. “Some fought so tenaciously, they became orcs.”

“Orcs!!” Echoriath bleated, the safety of Tathren’s arms almost irresistible, now. 

“Would you not let me warm you some, Echo?” the golden elf beckoned him, offering his embrace. “I long to succor you. Will you not allow me such a… a privilege?” 

/Chivalrous to a fault/, Legolas reflected, with even more pride. Yet the response made the archer prick up his ears, disbelieving that such strangeness had indeed been uttered by the young one. 

“But you will not love with me!” Echoriath mused forlornly. “Though it be none other than my hundredth begetting-day and I would take comfort with none other than you, meleth.” 

Tathren’s reply was ever the more unusual, the more disquieting. 

“I said not that we would forgo loving entirely, melethron,” Tathren clarified, inching closer. “Merely that I would stay our loving awhile. If only to assure my ragged heart that you are, indeed, both whole, and mine alone. That my touch will please you, that you will revel, as always, in our bed-play.” Legolas found he suddenly required the full support of the tree. “Besides, did I not promise a… a private gift, for your precious eyes alone?” 

Echoriath gasped at this further temptation, he had forgotten this promise and that very second forgot his reluctance to be enveloped by his beloved. For long, vital moments Tathren held him close, soothing his tremors away and whispering of his constant love. Echoriath soon curled into his arms as if veritably hanging off him, the only impetus to loosen them the softing of his cousin’s lips on his brow. When he lifted his face to meet the gentle, familiar kiss, Legolas felt his knees bucket. As the darkling elf was leaned against the stone wall and caressed with mounting ardor, the disbelieving father gaped openly, yet unable to reconcile the sight before him with any scrap or measure of propriety. 

The fact, however, remained. This fact, this unpalatable, incredulous, shrieking circumstance affronted him so severely, he could do naught but retreat, his first in centuries of soldiering. He staggered blindly back to the table without thought to the ruckus he might create over the dewy grass; his mind wrestling so with reaction, reason, and baleful acceptance that all in the company glared wonderingly at him. Even his brute father would be proud at his imperceptible rallying, at the steeling of his features into a comely smile. In the privacy of their home, he would not keep the knowledge from Elrohir, but he could not trouble Elladan, Glorfindel, nor loyal Elrond, not until he had consulted with his mate as to the best course of action. 

He wondered, with considerable horror, if he was elf enough to effect it. If their powerful, elemental son he had earlier praised so pridefully was by now forever lost to them. 

***

Distracted by the hot kisses repeatedly culled from his reddened mouth, his darkling lover failed to remark the cozy improvements he’d made to the greenhouse alcove; indeed, that they were even leaning against the inside of the entranceway. So involved was he with twining arms, probing tongues, and needful clutches - his earlier assault evaporated into the steam of longing that burned off them – that even the pungent smell of mulch just beyond the door had not penetrated his rapt senses, though the compost had recently been moved outside, unbeknownst to the master gardener. 

Easing out of their embrace to soak in the sight of his exquisite beloved in the full bloom of majority, Tathren clasped those rugged planter’s fingers and lead him along the path. Echoriath followed, giddy as ever when ripe with want, until they came before the alcove and his breath left him. The slip of a cot had been replaced by a silk-sheeted mattress, flowering with gold, copper, and navy cushions. Drapes lithe as rose petals tented over the space, which glowed with the effulgent flames of a dozen flute-stemmed candles. Amenities galore adorned the discreet waytable: a bowl of fruit, a carafe of miruvor complete with willow-leaf goblets, a loin-stirring selection of salves, oils, creams. With an ebullient exclamation, and to Tathren’s gape-jawed astonishment, Echoriath skipped towards the alcove, doffed his boots, and plunged into the sinking center of the bed. After some horseplay, he lay amidst the bountiful satin like a king among courtiers, crossing his arms beneath his head and leering at his bemused beloved. 

“I shall take you in this blessing of a bed, meleth,” he unabashedly grinned. “Twice, at the least.” 

“What if I were to take you, lirimaer?” Tathren countered fondly. 

“You shall,” he decided, testing the bounce of the mattress with a wicked glint. “Thrice.” 

“Thrice?” he chuckled, perching on the edge. He gazed down at him with such reverence, Echo feared he would turn maudlin. He had not mistaken the fury with which Tathren had bore down on his assailant, the fever both heartened and harried him in turn. To be so loved was daunting, indeed, to be forever worthy of such a love… 

“Indeed,” Echoriath playfully informed him. “Once with your turgid maleness, then with your mouth, then… again with your maleness, lest I think of some other appendage that might entice.”

“A foot, perchance?” Tathren teased him. “A toe?” 

“Perchance,” the darkling elf beamed anew, then lay his head in his lap. “Do you love me, tathrelasse?” 

“With every breath in my being, my Echo,” he swore. 

“Then give me my gift!!” he trilled, hopping into a seating position. 

His golden eyes glittered like galleons in the candlelight, such a wealth of knowledge they guarded. As he gazed into that open, honest face, Tathren again pondered how he could have only lately come to love this becalming spirit, this centrifugal heart of such steadying influence that he never again wanted to stray from their common path. The pretenders to such a hallowed throne bothered him little in light of the greater challenges before them: their impending revelation, their relative youth, their concomitant ambitions, and the stoking of their forever fire. Longly had he quarreled with himself over the timeliness of such an action as was about to be undertaken, not least when, but an hour before, he was crouched under a bridge begging his beloved to allow his succor. When he had held his fright-ravaged lover before the spitting hearth and stared back at a table of steely fathers, their blanched countenances like specters amid the din. What terrors would their faces betray, upon the morrow, when they learned of their relations, of his intentions towards this darkling fair? 

When Echoriath tugged impatiently at his hands, he roused himself. 

“But from where will this newly offering emerge?” he asked, with impish anticipation. “I have groped you well enough to know there is at present no bump or hardness on your person, Tathren. Later, perhaps…” He gingerly pinched his thigh, which indeed sent a jolt to his groin. 

“In your ardor, you have missed it,” he insisted, but stayed further objections with a flutter of a kiss. “Hush, now. I would tell you of this… this offering, I would make you.” 

Drawing in a centering breath, Tathren gathered him into an easy, but affectionate hold. When their eyes locked, he knew his course to be unwavering, at once unique and eternal among their kin. That there was only one sea to sail, that the tide flowed to the beat of their constant hearts. 

“Echo,” he commenced, with a piercing sincerity. “In my few years of life, I have always wandered, seeking destiny away from hearth, home, and my learned family. If I had been born in the prime of a different age, I would have been an elf of Greenwood the Great, my Sindar blood ever urges me forth, deeper in, further away. I never thought to find an anchor so close to this, our third and final homely house; I thought to drift, like a reed in the rapids, from settlement to barren land, not building as you, but forging my own path through this splendorous, unwieldy world of ours. Yet in you, whom I have ever unwittingly esteemed and regarded with fraternal affection, I have found the very rudder of this testy vessel, this boat that threatens to capsize at the breeziest notion of establishment, of settlement. I cannot commit myself to haunting this vale until the end of my days; I am sworn to people, not to places. Ever in unbreakable trust, ever in most immaculate honor, and it is thus that I would swear myself to you, from whom I have no intention of ever being parted.” He fiddled, for an instant, beneath his vest, concealing a tiny velvet pouch within his broad archer’s hand. Though he shivered some, Echoriath was mesmerized by his comeliness, but the conviction with which he declared himself. “I would roam the far reaches of this land, but ever with you at my side. You may be twinned to another, but at your birth I believe our hearts were made glorious whole, cleft in twain in our youth only to reunite the moment we embraced in the orchard. Let it be said, now and forever: I love you. I have never so cherished another soul. You are the very essence of my life’s blood, the very scarlet that singes through my veins and keeps my heart racing. I want us to stroll through immortality as we strolled along our beloved shore, graciously, wisely, and with ever-supporting arms. I am yours, my flame would burn with yours, burn with our soldered love… my most genial and endearing Echoriath, cousin, heart’s brother, lover and friend: would you join this adoring heart in a pledge to be bound?” 

To owlish, but luminous eyes were revealed two mithril bands, a tangle of willow leaves stopped thrice by cobapple blooms. Both were laced with simple pewter chains, to wear around the neck until the formal family betrothal. Sundered by shock, Echoriath found he could not speak, though there was no doubt as to his answer, as to his heart’s favor. Instead, he took up the longer chain. Tathren bowed his head. He soon laid the links around his lissome neck, the ring on his chest. He held the jewel like a timid bird in his palm, as Tathren had once held his trembling frame and coddled him, so many nights ago. He closed his fingers around the band, then met his questing eyes anew. 

“Eternally, I would be yours, my giving, golden one,” he vowed, then fought to allay his joyous tears as his neck was similarly adorned. 

They melded then, hands, mouths, bodies, and spirits, waiting on the fusing of their ecstatic soul flames. 

 

End of Part Eight


	9. Part 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Many revelations lead to a calamitous choice.

Part Nine

The air was sweet when he woke, a misty mélange of peaches, plants, candle fumes, and the chrysanthemum beds that surrounded his disordered alcove. 

Echoriath had never been roused amidst such a glorious chaos. Though the greenhouse itself was manicured to a fault, if somewhat overgrown, his own space was in utter, enthusiastic disarray. The sheets were emphatically rumpled, even torn in places, stained with juices, drink, and other saucy expenditures. Those candles that had not burned out were overturned, their wax bled overside or splattered across the floor tiles. The left rod of drapes had collapsed over the flowering cactus of the southern patch, some pillows had been flung among the western poplars, to say nothing of the odd, buttery substance congealed on the side of his easel, purportedly out of harm’s way. On the way table, shards of gouged fruit dried in oozing pools of oil, the salve jar practically swiped clean early that morn by desperate, servile fingers. The vinegaring, nearly drained carafe of miruvor told the sordid tale, as did the flushed body that blanketed him. 

To say that their loving had been uproarious, revolutionary, and divinely molten would be to scornfully underrate the bedding of his still youthful immortality. The overwhelming emotion of their betrothal had carried into the first, smoldering coupling of the night. Engulfed in the scorching, sapphire flame of Tathren’s eyes, Echoriath was ordered to strip with exacting deliberation, the slip of each clasp timed as drops from a faucet. With the baring of each subsequent stretch of skin, each muscle and sinew, those aquamarine pools further rippled with reverence, until Echo stood naked before him, not a swatch of cloth concealing his limber frame, not a shadow over his resplendent soul. Tathren had then requested that he be similarly, painstakingly undressed. By the time the last knot of those velvety breeches had been loosed, both elves were veritably quaking. 

Yet his immaculate lover had not rushed them, laving hot-tongued caresses over his entire form only to then take his mouth with supreme delicacy, delving as if the fleshy cavity were unknown to him. Ripe aureole had been worried with wispy fingers, Echoriath so tightly wound that even a ghostly touch stung sharp. After a rapturous eternity of fondling preparation, he had been taken with no less care; Tathren sinking into the most sacred part of him as if luxuriating in a long-soak bath. Completion had come almost as an afterthought to the sensuous slow-dance of their overwrought bodies, the melding of their worshipful gazes, the ethereal mating of their spirits. They had lain, entwined, for nearly an hour after, content to stroke the other’s soft-cheeked face, to sigh, to stare adoringly into the neverending deep of a beloved’s eyes. 

That was, until Echoriath had a fit of coughing, his throat parched from crooning moans. 

Baited by this, Tathren had begun to feed his lover a peach, then decided Echo might find the pulpy fruit all the more delectable if smeared across his chest. He had, indeed, and more places besides, the back of his thighs were soon devilishly sticky and his buttocks of the most savory plumpness the darkling elf could ever have imagined. Their capricious lust ignited, they had sucked, ground, and writhed through the night, with no rest for the adventurously wicked, no release so sating as to quench their mutual, manic thirst. Each had been taken once, then again and again, no insinuation too artful, nor overture too bold; the salve had flowed as freely as the quick gulps of miruvor, before another taunt had them twined anew. 

Though he had no distinct memory of Tathren’s eventual collapse - over him, as the revels had so flirtingly begun – the claws of strain, the chafing flanks, the unspeakable gnaw within him all indicated that they had had no energy left to medicate themselves. Yet even as he ached beneath his lover’s braised, bruised, and seed-clammy body, his desire wrenched to life against Tathren’s supple abdomen, thoughts of a warm tongue, of moist lips smoothing along his hard erection too luring to evict from his raw senses on this barely nascent morn. To distract himself, he blinked his eyes clear, pawed at the chain around his neck, and lifted his sterling band into view. With a secretive smile, he pushed a curious finger through, soon admiring how the exquisitely crafted jewel improved his coarse architect’s hands. 

Nimble archer’s fingers soon clasped his own, bending the knuckles forward for the perusal of serene ocean eyes. With a glimmer of a grin, Tathren kissed the fingers, the knuckles, the ring itself, then brushed too-enticing lips over those of his lover. 

“Forever,” he vowed anew, then pressed against his reddened mouth with ravenous insistence. 

He ground their hips together, their shafts suddenly as sprightly as dueling broadswords, their gorgeous friction blindsidingly electric. Echoriath bucked up, hard and eager, as he groped the waytable for something suitably salve-worthy. Tathren snatched up a vial of heather-scented oil, the thickest of the few remaining balms, then shifted off long enough to douse their laps as generously as syrup over honeycakes. He worked the young elf until his engorgement was spuming, then took up his own thorough anointment. The sight of Tathren teasing himself was almost too much for Echoriath to bear. With avid eyes and a lust-leadened tongue, he watched the able hand cull itself to scarlet-swollen readiness. So sinfully arousing was the view that Echoriath tugged a meaty leg around his waist and urged his beloved to mount him. 

Whether those golden eyes were so enthralled by his patient impalement on the intruding shaft or his brute pulls on his own tight-spiked erection, Tathren cared little. He perceived but love alone in those burnished orbs, tinged wanton, but blazing with a kindred soul’s radiance. As his battered, exhausted body was plundered once again, he surrendered himself wholly to the bliss of his Echo’s love. 

“Beauty,” he rasped, on the verge of a momentous end. “My beauty, I will never forsake you.” 

“Do what you will, melethron-nin,” Echo crowed in response. “I am yours; ever, eternally yours.” 

With a raising cry, they spent themselves, the feeling too intense to keep them longer. When Tathren slammed down on his drenched chest, neither elf could help the giggles that shook them, as they kissed, clutched, and lingered in celebration of their most tender and endless love. 

Until, that was, a water bucket clanked against the stone tile, lurched over, and spilt. Their groggy heads whipped around to witness Elladan’s bashful, hasty retreat. 

* * *

His eldest son was more gray-hewn than silvery when the noon hour struck, his eyes studiously downcast and his gait itinerant as he eased himself through the balcony doors, one haunch at a time. With a look of consternation, Glorfindel rose from his armchair; the rustling of the parchment documents he perused causing Cuthalion to mark him, then sigh with palpable relief. His son shuffled over, crept into his arms, and hugged him with disturbing vehemence; he had not been so embraced by his child since his tender years. 

Cuthalion, however, appeared in no mood to discuss what ailed him. 

“Thank you, Ada, for the wondrous revels of yestereve,” he murmured into his shoulders. “Truly, I have not passed a more pleasant night.” 

“Your gratitude would be better blessed on Erestor,” Glorfindel humbly replied. “Despite the arrival of his lovely daughter, he managed all the arrangements.”

“Have you seen her?” Cuthalion asked, seemingly loathe to release him. “Is she fair?” 

“As a dew drop on a willow leaf,” Glorfindel elaborated. “Her name is Miriel, after Haldir’s naneth. With eyes as verdant as a springtime meadow and Erestor’s lush sable hair.” At that description, Cuthalion veritably withered from him, padding over to his seat so lugubriously his father thought he heard his very bones creak. Yet his son remained unprepared for even the most gentle inquisition. “You best take some oats, to hardy you. I fear your brother may tarry awhile yet.” 

“If he indeed presents himself,” Cuthalion snarked, rather ungenerously considering the subject at hand was his dear twin. Seeing his father’s baleful glare, he sighed morosely. “Some porridge would be fine, Ada.” 

After calling on their cook, Glorfindel perched not in his favorite armchair, but in the seat beside his muted son. Though the young elf had dressed meticulously, his hair was strangely unbound, the lissome silver sheathes curtaining off his angular face from all but those directly before him. Glorfindel rested a testing hand on the apex of his shoulder blades. With an assonant purr of gratitude, Cuthalion curved in his back and allowed him to stroke down. The frankly concerned father set a patient rhythm, not a word between them in the long minutes it took the steaming bowl of oats to arrive, naught but silence even when his son essayed a mouthful. He paused but a second when Talion scooped up his spoon, enough to meet two solicitous eyes amidst a tumble of unfettered locks, then resumed, caught as he was between frustration and some vague, paternal satisfaction. 

Frustration eventually won out, as it often did with the Balrog-slayer.

“Come now, my brave one,” Glorfindel urged him. “What gloom is this that has beset you on such a triumphant morn? The first of your true majority, rich of talent, kind of heart, possessed of such charms –“

“*Saes*, Ada,” he grumbled. “Speak not of my charms, for I have… I have discovered their limitation.” 

“Limitation?” Glorfindel pressed on, sensing that his son’s need to confess himself was quite easily provoked. “Tell me not Esmerithil has spurned you so cruelly on your very begetting-day?!”

“Would that I had sought pleasure in Esmerithil’s arms,” Cuthalion mused, plunking his spoon into the thick of his porridge with a resounding splash. “To speak of eyes as green as meadows…” 

“I was sure you had finally convinced her,” Glorfindel quietly noted. “But which, then, did you take to bed? Is she the cause of your dismay?”

“He,” Cuthalion admitted. His father’s eyes went wide. “Olonlir, the seafarer, was my… I had thought to…” The silvery elf suddenly mewled aloud, so forlornly Glorfindel wanted to embrace him anew. “Oh, Adar!! I am no elf at all…” 

More than ever before, Glorfindel became aware of the hairsbreadth thinness of the ice on which he currently tread. Between elves of any gender, bed-play with an innocent in certain telltale ways could lead to a multitude of embarrassments, even for one so experienced in other arts as his randy son. 

“He gave you no pleasure,” the tense father guessed, fearing the worst. 

“None at *all*,” Cuthalion groaned, with such acute disappointment the golden elf thought he might drop his face in his oats from shame. “He is an elf of such rugged beauty, such repute for gentility and tenderness in the love-arts, I thought I would have no end of ecstasy. He is gallant as his renown, truly, he was so soft with me. But I…” 

“You have found yourself out, ioneth,” he smiled sympathetically. “As a lover of maids.” 

“I *so* wanted, Ada, to enjoy him,” he sped on, unable to damn himself now that the secret was out. “His kisses were sweet, I cannot fault his touch. I was roused, for a time, when he bent to please me…” He bit his tongue, afraid he had passed the limit of father-son allowance, but Glorfindel squeezed a supportive hand into his side. 

“I have performed the act enough times to hear it described, Talion,” he encouraged him. 

With a fearsome blush, Cuthalion continued: “No matter how accomplished his talents were… I found I could not… I could not spend. He thought me nervous, so we moved on to his pleasure. In my shame, I felt I had no choice… but I could not stomach his seed. He laughed at this!! Which burned me some, I must say…”

“Perhaps he is not so gentle as others claim,” Glorfindel remarked. “It is rather uncouth to laugh at a lover who has knelt to you.”

“In his defense, he is a rather merry creature,” Cuthalion pursued. “Indeed, were it not for his mirth, he may have taken what followed with far less grace. He again succeeded in rousing me some, so much that I found myself balmed and readied before I even noted the salve had been brought out. By this time, I was quite wanting of release, so he prepared me well and… I will save you some details, Ada, but to relate that… once the pain was eased, I… I was unmanned. He found his end well enough, and I have a sore backside for my trouble.” 

“There are curative ointments, my dear one,” Glorfindel pointed out, not completely understanding the problem. “I regret the lesson you learned last eve was so unsatisfying, and on such an important night, but a little rest and a long soak in the mineral baths -“

“Ada, you do not mark me!!” Cuthalion mewled again, so sorrowfully Glorfindel brushed a tear from the silver elf’s cheek. “I cannot lie with an ellon and take pleasure!! I am… so poorly made that I can love with naught but maids!!” 

“What is so shameful about lying with maids?” Glorfindel questioned him, astonished at this bizarre outburst. “And you are by no means poorly made, son of mine, child of the most hallowed warrior of his mighty generation, glorious and savage in every deed, second Lord of Imladris and first in my heart. The very color of your hair sign of your blithe grandmother’s influence!” 

“But I will never love as you and Ada-Dan,” Cuthalion glowered, though chastened by his father’s words. “Your love is so pure, so ardent, so… bountiful. I will never know such an essential connection with another, not as Echoriath will with-… with one of his choosing.” In the face of his father’s utter, bemused shock, he muttered on. “I long to be so immaculately regarded, to know the passion that quakes and sunders you so… so becomingly!! Yet now I will never be so loved…”

Stifling a heartened chuckle, Glorfindel wove pacifying arms around his frazzled, misguided son. 

“Ioneth, you will love as thunderously we,” he whispered to him. “But with the mate of your heart. That such a one will be a maid does not lessen the force of the love you will come to bear her. Think on your grandsire and his beloved, Luinaelin and his mate, how brutally Rumil has mourned the passing of his wife to Mandos. Think you the love these couples share any less than that I hold for your Ada-Dan? That Elrohir holds for Legolas?” 

“Nay,” he replied hesitantly, allowing his father’s reasoning to penetrate. 

“You have been hurt in your explorations, Talion,” Glorfindel continued. “For that I am saddened. To lie with one who does not please you is one of the most cutting acts in our existence. But that, my brave one, is the nature of risk, and you were bold to take him on, even if the result was rather insipid. You must take heart in that.” 

“But where is *my* melethron, Ada?” he groused. “The one who was born beneath a blessed star, who was meant for me alone? You and Ada-Dan have set us a daunting precedent, one Echo-…” Cuthalion bit his very tongue, struggling to save himself. “One he will surely match.” 

Glorfindel smirked wistfully, but did not break his hold. “Your brother will pass trials of his own. Though love’s discovery and indulgence be not one of them… he will be sharply tested. This path he has chosen…” His father averted his eyes, just then, such that Cuthalion almost pressed him on it. “No matter, nin bellas. You will have your beloved, Talion, fear not. Perhaps the Valar fashion her grace as we speak.” 

“By Elbereth, I hope she is finely made,” his son sighed, but seemed cheered by their talk. 

“For you, ioneth-nin,” Glorfindel insisted. “She can be naught but of the very radiance of the Lady herself.” 

Just then, they were unceremoniously interrupted by the batter of boot heels on the balcony planks. Elladan, his brow as storm-periled as Cuthalion’s had been abashed, strode out among them, with all the severity of a weary guard-captain and without a second glance at his troubled son. 

“Leave us, Cuthalion,” he commanded. “I would speak with your Ada privately.” 

“Talion is fraught, meleth,” Glorfindel informed him, with a meaningful glance. Cuthalion stayed his ground, guessing well enough the matter at hand, for none other would cause a lord to act so ignobly among kin. “Can the Council not be stayed awhile?”

“This is no matter of Council, Glorfindel,” he stated with the barest of restraint. He did, however, take in his son’s bleak countenance. /Would there be no end of urgency?/ “Saes, ioneth.”

“Nay, Ada-Dan,” the silver elf stood his ground. “I will have my earful, if my gentle brother is to be slighted here.” 

Elladan’s eyes, hard as mithril, bore into him as never before. “I would rather gut my entrails and feed them to a nest of wargs than slight a child of my siring. If you think me so base, then I wonder at your allegiance with this house.”

“*Elladan*,” Glorfindel stopped him, rising to rest a calming hand in the hollow of his mate’s back. “Slight not the eldest son while defending the younger.” His mellow eyes locked with his husband’s dark stare, he gestured towards an armchair. With a formidable snort, Elladan sat. Without taking his supportive gaze off his mate, he instructed his eldest. “Go to your brother, Talion. I fear he will have need of you.” 

“My brother is in the finest company of all,” Cuthalion underlined, quietly refusing this father, as well. “I serve him best here.” 

“Then perchance you may explain to us,” Elladan grumbled, his face peaked. “Why he has kept his heart so stubbornly away? On which occasion in your upbringing we went so terribly wrong as to not deserve such vital information as the growing love between he and his *cousin*? That I should step so innocuously into the greenhouse and discover them writhing as only longtime lovers could, without the decency of foreknowledge of such an essential chapter in my own son’s immortal life? Can you, Talion, illuminate me as to the reason I have been banished from the confidence of my most tender child, one who has ever sought my succor, my regard? What error or judgment or paternal fault has caused me to loose such a prized station, such a…” His darkling father looked out over the treetops, his eyes brimming with hurt. “What have I done? Ever have I told him that any elf of his heart would be welcome in our home. That he is loved in return by such an elf as Tathren, whom we already esteem as our own, is but…” Glorfindel had him close before a tear could fall; he knew how Elladan hated to weep openly, his watery eyes sign of his ultimate vulnerability where his sons were concerned. That desolate stare soon breeched his own, as his brittle husband sought consolation. “Has he come to so fear our scorn, meleth? Have we given him such cause?” 

“Never, Ada,” Echoriath himself replied, as he and Tathren came out onto the balcony. 

The pair were recently showered and groomed. Though informally clothed, they had taken great care in their appearance, selecting sober yet flattering raiment, intricately braiding their almost entirely restrained locks, and concealing their love scars, so as not to further goad their betters. Yet naught could hide their unbound affection; their arms and hands linked possessively, their eyes luminous from their night of loving, their satiny skin nearly incandescent under the supple morning sun. The veil of secrecy over their relations had been emphatically cast off, no longer did they suffer the repression of their mutual regard. In every motion, every gaze met, they were as one. 

When they moved towards the table, all assembled held their breath, as if in deference to their beauty. Echoriath left Tathren’s side but an instant, to kneel before his red-eyed father. 

“Forgive me, Adar,” he begged him. “I have behaved basely. In our defense, we had chosen to declare ourselves this very morn, but that alone cannot not dismiss the injury we have done you.” 

“Yet still do you fear our reproach,” Elladan mused. “You fear *me*.” 

Echoriath bowed his head solemnly. “You are not the only elder who must approve us. I daresay if you had been, we may have been more forthcoming.” 

“None must *approve* you!” Cuthalion protested. “Show me the elf that denies you your love, for I will show him my broadsword!” 

“Peace, Talion,” Tathren almost chuckled. “Let your brother and father be mended. And let me beg amends as well, Ada-Dan, and to you Ada-Fin, for my own culpability.” 

With a mighty sigh, Glorfindel responded: “As for confessions, I must make my own, in turn. To you, melethron-nin, if no other. I have long suspected such relations were taking place between you, pyn-neth, but feared any common knowledge of such an affair would forever taint the flow of emotion between you, sunder both your budding romance and your cousinly bond. I once felt a similarly crushing pressure in the early days of my binding with your father, I could not fathom what such intense scrutiny might do to elves not passed their two hundredth year! That you cared enough for your friendship and your growing love to conceal yourselves until the time was ripe is perhaps not trusting of your betters, but it is sign enough of the sanctity of your affections, the esteem in which you both hold your beloved and his fragile heart. So I, in turn, kept my tongue, perhaps not for the better.” 

To his surprise, Elladan swiftly clasped his hand and caressed it dotingly. “Nay, meleth, you were wise to do so.” Though his eyes continued to glisten, they were now imbued with the first glimmers of joy. The elf-warrior felt suddenly a moment greater than his petty cares transpired, a watershed event in the history of their close family. He released his husband to cup his anxious son’s face, almost disbelieving the comeliness and benevolent presence of the elf that knelt before him. “And you, nin ind… how love becomes you! Ever has its promise nourished your sheltered soul, but, now flourished, you are timelessly richened by its constancy.” He kissed his darkling son on the forehead, then helped them both to rise. A heartening smile, with some little traces of trepidation, greeted Tathren. “Take care of each other, my brave and tender ones, for you are both hopelessly dear to us.” 

“And do us the courtesy of foretelling us of your eventual betrothal,” Glorfindel teased them with an up-pointed brow, only to educe fearsome blushes from the young couple. 

Echo blinked furtively at Tathren, who took charge: “Indeed, your cunning is unparalleled in these fulsome lands, Ada-Fin.” It struck him, then, that this further revelation might only displease Ada-Dan all the more, but he continued nevertheless, mindful of even more dire consequences to any ongoing secrecy. “The gift I so taunted Echoriath with, just days ago, was… was more than a mere token. It was… a promise.” 

By this time Echo had extricated his ring chain, to the astonishment of all. 

“We are not yet formally betrothed,” the darkling elf explained, with characteristic timidity. “Neither of us can say where we might be in so short a span as a year. We are but sworn… we will be bound, in time.” 

“Naught could bring us greater joy, ioneth,” Elladan beamed at him, then wrapped his arms around them both. Cuthalion, as was his want, tackled them from behind, once they were embraced by each father in turn. Glorfindel was so blindstruck with emotion, he could barely speak. 

Tathren, however, made some telling remarks, as they sat down to table. “If only my own Adar had joined us…” 

A chill hush swept over them, as frosty as the north wind at winter’s beckoning. 

It was Elladan who dared speak first, echoing his husband’s earlier sentiments. “Alas, nin bellas, I fear Glorfindel’s self-cautions may prove perilously accurate. I would take the greatest care in informing my brother and his mate of your… your togetherness.” 

“I know it,” Tathren whispered, looking to Echo for solace. He found ample sympathy there, and no little reverence. 

“I, too, would that they could share such a resplendent meal, meleth,” he seconded. “And with such… such company.”

“They have been fraught, of late,” Elladan commented carefully. “Their bond ever-strong, even as Elrohir has been ailing.” 

“We are not the only ones to secret,” Tathren countered softly. “They will not tell me what has so beset him, though I mark the strain well enough.” 

“Nor are we free to tell of it,” Elladan excused himself and his too-silent husband. “Perhaps… perhaps this timely revelation will but reconcile you with them.” 

“Perchance,” Tathren murmured, his face paled and doubtful. 

“You must not tarry, in this,” Glorfindel finally spoke up, with the crispness of a guard-captain. “Elrond just sent word. Disaster has struck in Laurelin. The northernmost glaciers have melted with the spring, causing such a flood as to sunder more than half of their settlement. None were harmed, thank the Valar, but the frontier is set back years. The children and some worthy parents are boarding their ships presently, though their builders will yet remain. Some will be housed in shore-side towns, others will camp in our wilds. However, the need for new compounds, new domains is supremely urgent. The Council will take emergency measures… all adventuring parties have been sent amendments to their initial orders, and two other companies will depart within a month.” Rather than gasp at this news, all three pairs of tear-drop ears pricked up for further elaboration. “The richest commission, due south to the shalerock caves, will be the longest. Though the region can be reached by sea, the hope is to eventually score a trail through the mountains. This part of the journey, with the proper surveying, will be brutal for all concerned, spanning over a year’s time on this chore alone. The valleys beyond are lush, fertile plains, with woods that rival our own. I am told, with the encircling mountains, the spot bears a strong resemblance to Gondolin.” 

“Encircling mountains,” Tathren smirked at his beloved, squeezing his hand in anticipation. “*Echoriath*. The site beckons you, lirimaer.” 

“By our own master builder’s bid,” Glorfindel also acknowledged his son. “The city itself will take two years planning, while a ship is built for the return. With the envoy of supplies landed, the instruction of the foremen should take another year, at most. Five, in total, with time allotted for whatever difficulties may arise.” 

“I can build a ship,” Echoriath reminded them, shaking with excitement. “And a bridge. Many, if needed, along with docks, wells, talans, great halls… a city!”

“You need hardly list your talents, ioneth,” Glorfindel chastened him. “The commission is already yours to undertake or refuse. Thorontir and his company are sworn to you.” He sighed softly, eyes lingering on the last of those companions. “All but one.” 

“My apologies,” Tathren suddenly declared, rising. “But I must speak with my fathers. Have they been appraised of the dire turn of events in Laurelin? Of the Council’s decision?” 

“Stay, my brave one,” Elladan instructed him, with a pointed look. “I believe we must best accompany you, this day. When last I saw Elrohir, he was nearly purpled with fever. Legolas rushed him home.” 

“Is he unwell?” Tathren demanded. Without bothering to wait for an answer, he leaned into Echoriath’s reach and cupped his cheek. “Meleth, I must go to them.” 

“Saes, Tathren, await our company,” Glorfindel advised him. “This is no small matter you will appraise them of.” 

“If Ada-Hir is ill, I cannot wait,” he insisted. “I swear I will not speak of aught but well-wishes until you come, but I must not be kept from him. Ada-Las will have need of me. I have already spent the night at revels, while my Adar were poorly.” 

“Go, melethron,” Echoriath encouraged him, despite his fathers’ resignation. “After our meal, I will come presently.” 

“Hannon le, Echo-nin,” Tathren smirked, before kissing him farewell. Stealing a bun from the waiting tray, he spirited away. 

“I am anxious over him,” Elladan concluded. His argent eyes looked upon his sweet, well-grown Echoriath, no longer entirely his own. “Though I confess, the thought of parting with either of my sons for half a decade weighs even heavier upon me. A month is far too brief a time to be reconciled to a life without my dearest children.”

“Or a time when my brother is far from me,” Cuthalion seconded. 

“Or a time when our family will live apart,” Glorfindel finished for them. “Best enjoy the present company while we may.” 

With a communal nod of acceptance, the family said a prayer of thanks to Elbereth and tucked into their meal. 

* * * 

Despite the obscuring curtains, the sallow rays of springtime’s brief remission lit the chamber a cool, cobalt blue, as if the elves within were ensconced in a mermaid’s cove. The expansive green coverlet, of an aquatic shade, twined around the listless, embedded elf like seaweed filaments around a beached cast-away, as tendrils of his ebony hair wilded across his sandy-white pillow. Legolas leaned against the hull-husk of the headboard, his pale fingers stroking through the wispy ends so as not to wake sleep’s delicate hold on his exhausted mate. 

Neither had he slept, night last, but this was of little consequence where Elrohir’s wellness was concerned. His husband had been so lighthearted at revels, even one so attuned to the elf-knight’s dissonant moods as he had failed to remark the tremors that intermittently shook him at his desire’s prolonged restraint. Legolas had believed Elrohir to have taken a half-dose of the draught in late afternoon, so as to assure his ease. His ever-doting husband, however, had wanted to feel the heat of their flirtations, wanted his quicksilver eyes to reflect hunger at his comeliness, wanted to be entranced all over again by the spell of his archer’s affection. Yet he had failed to inform said husband of his decision. Elrohir had been so accomplished in its playing out that Legolas had only remarked how violently flush his countenance had become at the latest possible hour, when his husband, woozy from his relentless efforts to smite his want, had nearly fainted in his arms. Alternately raging with fever and seizing with shivers, Legolas had quickly borne him home, but enflaming his agony by brewing a dose of the draught. 

With penitent, yet desolate eyes, Elrohir had sipped down the foul concoction as Legolas had cooled his brow with a compress; his scathing self-beratement tempered by his fair husband’s absent stare. Once the tonic took its dulling effect, Elrohir had focused his keen mind on the cause of Legolas’ unspoken distress, he had not been right since returning to their table from his garden stroll. In a pained whisper, Legolas had confessed the whole of his under-bridge discoveries, which had immediately curdled the last of Elrohir’s reserves of paternal sweetness. 

The elf-knight had been enraged as Legolas had never seen before, his pupils but spear-tip pricks in his adamantine eyes. As the drug would not let his anger properly flare, his innards had been nearly liquefied by the corrosive news. The rarest of maladies among elfkind was purging, so rare Legolas had never seen aught but overly intoxicated men suffer from such undignified maladies. Elrohir, however, had then been harrowingly beset, such that the blonde elf had summoned Erestor in the dead of night and begged him as he had never in all his years to provide a remedy that would not be summarily vomited into their tub, the only receptacle voluminous enough to contain Elrohir’s now-bloody retches. As he had cradled his rather frighteningly stoic husband – trust Elrohir to bear this most ungracious of ills as blithely as a dying swan – waiting on Erestor’s pungent tea and waiting out the latest wave of nausea, a remote part of Legolas had been thankful for this distraction, this respite from their imminent, sure to be fractious discussion: how to approach their belligerent son. Despite his ongoing misery, Legolas had been certain there was yet a sliver of Elrohir’s reasoning mind dedicated to the very same, impossible question, even as he had grappled for the rim and had spat crimson globs of phlegm into the bath. 

He’d succored the darkling elf with fleeting, feeling kisses between scalding gulps of tea, best consumed at peak temperature to effectively hot-wash his intemperate stomach. The earlier draught, Erestor had judged, had already seeped in enough to numb his testy desire (thank Elbereth), which left Elrohir weakened, but acutely wakeful. Yet he’d insisted Legolas tuck them both into bed; he’d gratefully thanked and done so. There, his pacified elf-knight had exposed himself to him as never before: how poorly he esteemed his own paternal graces; how terrified he was, in Tathren’s infancy, that the child would never regard him as a true father; his utter heartbreak at word of this deception. 

For the one who had been so lightening swift to accuse them of dishonesty had inveigled them as mercilessly as the Mirkwood king himself; not through the urging of his Sindar blood, but through his very own devising. 

At dawn, when Elrohir did not yet sleep, Legolas had sung his beloved a lullaby. Though the elf-knight had been lulled into a yet fretful slumber, his husband prayed that even slender hours of rest would replenish him some for the coming confrontation. When word of his father’s sickness would be commonly known, Tathren would not tarry in harkening to them. 

Legolas yet wondered whether this should hearten him. 

With a last, careful embrace of his lax mate, the golden elf slunk off their bed and slipped out of their chamber. Though neither would welcome nourishment, they could not forgo even the most tentative of fast-breaking if they hoped to survive the day; Elrohir was all but spent of sustenance and his own stomach was stone-hollow. A potent tea would be necessary to even the smallest scrap of consumption, he would start there and wait for culinary inspiration as to what, if anything, he might coerce Elrohir to eat. 

To his shock, the table was already set. A pot of the pungent herb tea had been recently brewed; it awaited them, along with thin sheets of toasted lembas, diluted honey, and dried shards of sour plums, a fruit Elrohir detested but the best remedy for his ailing innards. He expected a dismissive Loremaster to follow the sounding of boot-clops in from the kitchens, but instead, his son appeared. As Tathren laid out a basket of oat biscuits, Legolas tensed such that he feared his spine might snap. He had kept iron-clad counsel over his emotions while Elrohir ached, but at the sight of his injurious yet ethereally radiant son, Legolas verily thought he might weep. 

Before he could lift his eyes again to behold the preternaturally stunning creature that had for months mislead them, Tathren remarked him. 

“Ada,” he whispered, so as not to disturb his resting father. “What illness has befallen Ada-Hir? How does he fare? I met Erestor in the glade, but he would not detail the worst of it…” Tathren moved to embrace his obviously battered father, but the spike of a steel-capped stare kept him back. “Ada?” 

“Saes, Tathren,” Legolas rallied to temper his ire. “I would not Elrohir be taxed by your presence, for the moment. Leave us in peace and return for the evening meal.”

“How might my presence be taxing to Ada-Hir?” he asked incredulously, then better examined his brittle father. Never had he seen him so burnished, so distraught. Though fear for his other father’s health gripped him, he dismissed this tiny rebuke as born of exhaustion and essayed another tact with practiced patience. “Ada, by your eyes you are pained and weary. Rest awhile. I will tend to-“

“Tathren, my compliance with this charade hangs but by a spider’s thread,” Legolas broke in. “Return to your home and await us there.” 

“Ada, what is this brusque manner?” Tathren questioned him, provoked despite himself.

“Why do you not heed to my requests?!” Legolas barked. “Your sire asks a service of you, he would that you perform it without delay.” 

“My *sire*?!” Tathren snorted, then schooled himself. This was no time for immaturity, there was some dark mischief afoot. “Ada, why are you so sharp with me?” 

He again stepped towards his father, who retreated even further back into the foyer and turned adamantly away. When a hand flew up to cover his mouth, an icy fear, such as the young adventurer had never before known, stilled the blood in his veins. His father, the most hallowed archer of Mirkwood, one of the Blessed Nine of the Fellowship, son of Thranduil and of the hardiest Sindar stock, such a bold, vicious, and battle-worn elf as the renown Legolas… wept. His father wept. 

Yet in his sorrow he was far from silent. 

“You have not come to succor us,” Legolas acidly accused him. “Nor to inquire after Elrohir, his entrails knotted with illness at the news of your… Such easy kindness comes too late, Tathren, to suck back all the bile he’s spewed into the bath, to bequeath him a night-span of unblemished slumber. We know of your relations with your… your…” The young elf was assaulted by spurning red eyes, though his tears had not abated. “No ready table could save him knowledge of this grief. Of your deception.” 

“Why do you not name him my father?!” Tathren demanded, yet disbelieving he could be the cause of his Ada-Hir’s torment. “Why do you not name me his son?!” 

“What son smears *such* a father so basely?” Legolas wondered morosely. “In the court of your esteem, we are but penny-hungry fools; there to merry you in maudlin times, but a bane to your ambitions. And they are plentiful, are they not? To live independent of our cloying care, to reign yourself as one unfettered by familial ties, to roam these lands in search of… I cannot say what you search for. You would never confide to me the purest yearnings of your heart.” Tathren was nearly sick himself, so stabbing were his father’s words. “From tender youth, twas Elrohir who kept your confidence, and rightly so, for he is one of such reliance, such even-handed reason and unwavering constancy, Eru himself would seek him out for comfort. Even in your earliest adventuring days, you ran to him upon your return. Yet upon mooring in Aman, your have thought yourself above your steady father’s advisement and marked not how you wounded him with your tactfully phrased rejections. I fear this latest betrayal was the fatal blow.” 

“Nay!” Tathren cried, unmindful of the need for quietude. “Ever have I… have I… Ada, I have come this very morn to tell you both, that you might join with us in our joy. We are… we are promised. We kept the knowledge of our relations from you, true, but Ada-Fin and Ada-Dan were no more appraised. We feared… in truth, we feared you would be too concerned over the maintenance of our cousinly friendship to countenance our newly sprung affections and… perhaps wrongly, we waited out the blooming of our… our *love*. For we love each other, Ada, and will eternally.” 

At that foolhardy declaration, a dark figure breached the entering archway and loomed by the hearth. Elrohir, ghostly pale, waited out Legolas’ response, but the archer had eyes only for his mate. Though despairing eyes they were, they warmed some at the sight of him so resolutely upright. His own mithril orbs were hard as that impenetrable substance, yet tinged with a deadness Tathren had never had cause to witness before. The horror of it pierced him, quick and to the core.

When none else dared speak up, Elrohir expounded with the coldest of reasoning. 

“If you love your cousin as you say,” he pronounced. “Then you best delay your declarations until you have proved worthy of such entitlement. An elf but a day past his true majority is perhaps innocent enough to believe your embellishments, but were he to examine the manner of their weaving, he might find the cloth frayed in patches.” 

“Ada, you are bold-“

“Hold your tongue!!” Elrohir admonished him. “Are you not the very elf who accused us of deception for keeping your grandsire’s murderous intentions secret? Was your own deception not born in that very time of housing with the *very same* cousin you would now espouse after not a year’s courtship?!” 

“Nay, Ada, I sought not to deceive you!!” Tathren vehemently insisted. “I only sought time to foster our growing love…”

“Since summer last,” the elf-knight further charged him. “You have undertaken a relation of which you had full knowledge we would not approve, waited a sixmonth on informing us of its existence and took up residence with this elf to further inveigle us. Though I admit we would not have taken news of your courtship kindly, we have only ever held your happiness dear and would have worked to understand the feelings he evoked in you. As we will yet endeavor to accomplish, despite your grievous behavior.” Elrohir paused to center himself, but only began to quake. “I cannot yet truly speak of how… how this madness of yours has cut me, Tathren. You have severed the bond of trust between us. As I recall all the moments I thought you had confided in me, when you merely pulled the hood further over my eyes, in order to… you have besotted a child of my brother’s siring, I hope you of mettle enough to pledge yourself in earnest to him!” 

“*This* is the ore your are verily mining,” Tathren spat back, aggravated by his insinuations about Echoriath’s honor. “Will I never escape the blight of my Silvan blood, not even before my own father?” 

“Go from this house!!” Legolas snapped, as Elrohir began to sway. “I will not have you besmirch your father *and* my people in one fail blow.” Distracted by his mate’s needfulness, he abandoned his next words in favor of cottoning to the elf-knight. 

Elrohir, however, was far from bested: “If you think me one who loathes those of Silvan ilk, then you affront not merely my devotion to you - child I have nurtured out of love alone - but the very merit of my binding!! I will not suffer such a cruel tongue, not ever from one I have held so dear.” 

Though Tathren was instantly repentant, his shame singed something ferocious when Elrohir began to hack with coughs. His father’s fingers was soon spattered with scarlet drops, as he desperately sucked back wheezes of air. Tathren flew to the table and, trembling, poured a generous cup of the tea. By this time, his darkling father was withered into an armchair, Legolas petting his hair and whispering troths of love. Tathren guiltily proffered the cup. He knew, then, that he must confess his last, most gutting secret, lest he never again know his fathers’ proud regard. He waited until Elrohir had drunk several decent gulps, until his choking gasps had evened and his chest settled into a hesitant rhythm of breaths. 

“Will you… will you not tell me what ails him?” Tathren asked, almost without breath himself. 

“He has the lusting fever,” Legolas taciturnly replied, with no little reluctance. “Of one who is longtime bonded and would procreate with his mate. His ailment was at its apex, when he learned… the medicament so smote his rage, that he took ill.” When Elrohir shoved the cup away, Legolas rose to fill it again. Before passing, he upbraided his son. “Your future binding does not bode well, if you cannot find an apology for your very fathers.” 

“How can I beg apology,” Tathren cautiously pointed out. “When I hold secrets still?” 

Legolas sighed wearily, then fetched the tea without comment. Tathren tentatively approached his darkling father. He knelt before him, hoping to catch his gaze with greater ease, but Elrohir was by now nearly doubled over with the strain of attentiveness, of fury. Coupled with the desire to maintain his poise, the need to reproach through centered reasoning, and the chore of concomitantly experiencing the vicious throes of healing, the elf-knight was further wrecking his lithe frame by the passing moment. A groggy stare lifted to meet his woe-eyed son’s, his skin as if blued with ash. 

“Tell me,” he rasped, struggling to reach for his tea cup. 

“I would tell you first of our love,” Tathren essayed, his own stomach curdled with apprehension. “All that you have missed through my… my negligence. My disrespect, for your care.” He reached out to place a gentle hand on his father’s knee, but Elrohir curled away, into his husband’s arms. “I love him, Adar. He lights my soul, amplifies the ardor of my eternal flame and glorifies the dark recesses… We fumbled, at first, into courtship, but once it had begun the feeling of our togetherness, of our common endeavors, of our dreams swept us up and… here we are.”

“Indeed,” Legolas repliqued sharply. 

“Forgive me,” he pleaded, caught in a gust of emotion. “Forgive me, saes, Adar-nin, but I must follow where he leads me. His is the only note in the melody of my existence that has sung true.”

“We two had notes of our own,” Legolas grunted. “Once upon a time.” 

“He is your *cousin*,” Elrohir objected, changing tact. “Innocent of the world, an elf of humble routine… he has idolized you since infancy, Tathren, how do you mark a difference between that behavior and this? What do either of you know of the sacred love of bonded elves?”

“I know of his love,” Tathren swore to him. 

“What does he know of himself?!” Elrohir chided, with exasperation. “Will you keep your binding vows as vigilantly as you kept filial loyalty to your fathers?” 

“Do you forbid me to bind with him?!” Tathren demanded, leaping to his feet. “Then upon our return I shall defy you!!” 

Silence reigned for but a second of misapprehension, both fathers fearing the worst. 

“From whence will you return?” Legolas asked anxiously, an eye ever stuck to his waning husband. 

Tathren stood straight as a soldier, then declared: “The Council is decided. My beloved, the innocent, has been commissioned to the southern passage, through the mountains and beyond. My company has championed him, and I depart within a month.” 

If Elrohir looked wan before, he was verily waxen at this vow-breaking affirmation of his deepest, most disheartening fears. With a last, anguished effort, he crawled into Legolas’ arms, then mumbled his desperate need for respite to his mate. Eyes of arctic frost pierced into the young adventurer, warned him away from his own home. 

“No longer can your Ada bear such ungrateful words from one he veritably cradled,” Legolas seethed. “Nor can I stand to see the very vow I wrought from you so casually dismissed, and under such grave circumstance. Think on your actions awhile, Tathren, before we speak further.” 

Unable to digest such a harsh dismissal, Tathren gripped to Elrohir’s arm, as Legolas lifted him to his feet. 

“Ada, I would aid you,” he stubbornly insisted. 

“Nay, Tathren,” Elrohir murmured, the strength to entirely remove his hand eluding him. 

“I am an elf of this house!” he pleaded. “I would succor you, Ada… *Saes*, Ada-Las, you too are weary… let me be of some use to you… let me make amends…”

“*Nay*, tathrelasse,” Legolas offered him a gentle word, seeing his overwhelming distress. 

In a last, vain attempt, Tathren moved towards his retreating fathers, halted them, then bent to kiss Elrohir’s flush brow. After the most timorous of gazes, the elf-knight shut his eyes.

“I knew not, afore, by what other means you might injure me, ioneth,” Elrohir whispered, so soft and feeling Tathren though he himself might weep. “My body is in agony. My heart is cleft in twain. Have you come to break my very spirit?” 

Elrohir could then stand no more, and so collapsed against his waiting, worried husband.

 

End of Part Nine


	10. Part 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A family is broken.

Part Ten

To the unmindful eye, his garden was yet wintering. Barren as an upturned field after harvest, the sand-textured soil had readily absorbed the last of the moist leaf mulch and was now parched coarse as the badlands to the southwest. The premier buds and saplings had yet to nose out of the dry earth in search of the sallow sun, before the rain season giddily doused their beds, announcing the full blush of spring at last. 

In a month’s time, his garden would be lush again; yet his father-heart as fallow as the Dead Marshes. 

Nested amidst a throng of fur pelts, wool blankets, and downy quilts, Elrohir ignored the colossus of teapots his somewhat overanxious husband had brewed for him and instead drunk his full of the crisp, cleansing air. Feeling slightly henpecked on this swarthy, overcast afternoon, the elf-knight had demanded he be set up out of doors and shooed his grudgingly grateful mate out to the archery fields. Though his lusting fever appeared to be quelled, the purging sickness had persisted for several tumultuous days. The evenings brought brief respite from surly mornings and spacey days. A monotonously masticated dinner of plain, tasteless foods would be wishfully prepared for him, then consumed with commendable enthusiasm. Elrohir would fight the resulting nausea as a legion of snarling orcs, but would again find himself heaving into their tub, by midnight. Night last, however, he’d kept down his gruel through a Gil-Galadian effort of willfulness, thus was now begrudgingly recompensed with a stay outside, but not before Legolas had readied both his basket seat and a waytable full of amenities. 

Such was but a small luxury of their everlasting bond, the thoughtfulness of Legolas the fair. 

Neither he nor his tirelessly patient husband had set foot beyond the walls of their residence for nigh on a week, their doting family frequenting their abode as if permanent inhabitants. Celebrian had temporarily exiled their cook until her son was bettered, naught but a mother’s touch, in her esteem, would tempt her son’s bilious innards towards compliance. Elrond and Erestor camped in the study, furiously leafing through the most ancient tomes for alternative remedies to such a rare malady among elfkind. Glorfindel, with Cuthalion as his second, had taken full charge of preparations for the Laurelin survivors, while Elladan unofficially headed the Council. They visited evenings to allow Legolas time for vital rest, to distract Elrohir from his churning entrails with wicked-tongued merriments and with salacious gossip from the outer realms. Any discussion of the root cause of Elrohir’s distress was banished from the house as summarily as their flustered cook, though his father would grow fidgety with the repressed need to advise him if too long at his bedside. Elrohir himself had been so weak, he’d barely registered the quiescent state of alarm hovering around him, until he’d shuffled out of bed that morn and been greeted by a quorum of purple-rimmed eyes, poised to serve him. 

To their collected dismay, he’d chuckled fondly, thanked them generously, and begged them return to their homes to rest *themselves*. He’d nibbled on a modest fast-breaking with Legolas, who had nearly crawled onto the table and fallen to slumbering. Instead, they had both tucked into their cozy chaise-longue. His golden husband had slept like a babe in his arms, until the spectral sun was at its highest arc. Afternoon had brought renewed vigor to them both – or in his case, a less weighty lethargy. His mind, however, was keen again, so he chose to steal away the time in soul-scanning reflection. The days since his watershed argument with Tathren had been a dull-witted fugue. Elrohir knew he must conclusively settle himself, before facing either sorrowed mate, well-meaning father, or corroded son. That Tathren had been excluded these last days of strife for their family would feel to the young elf as too-vicious punishment; despite his own unabated hurt, Elrohir was both conscious of this and eager to reconcile them. If such measures were temporary and forced, then so be it; he would not have his son depart for five years away believing himself unloved by his caregivers. 

A wave of fatigue lured him deeper into the blanket folds, his energies too easily drained by conjecture and recollection. He grappled for the tea, but found the pot too heavy to lift. A childish frustration beset him: too long has he been waylaid by the indignities of this illness! He has traded hard-repressed lustiness for a humiliating languor, one entirely unbecoming an elf of his abilities – how shamelessly he had bemoaned his past afflictions, not knowing what embarrassments could replace them! With a whine of frustration, he gave up the remedial tea and burrowed further into his covers, regretting the surety with which he earlier dismissed his Legolas. What he would not give, in the present, pressing moment, for the sight of his teasing grin, for a wry laugh from his velvet throat and a lilting tune to bask in… 

He had wanted, these last nights, for the strength to love with his mate, to be replenished by Legolas’ most tender touch and enveloped in the tight of his embrace. Only there could his fractured heart be truly mended, only there would he discover the way to ease his troubled son. Yet at the moment, his acid-bloated stomach wanted the tea most, while his cranky body wanted sleep’s balming oblivion. 

He noted twin shadows stretch across the garden path, as two elves as twilight-fair as he crept onto the terrace. One look from his placid-eyed brother told him Elladan had instantly recognized his plight, his actions bearing out this supposition, when he poured him a generous mug of tea and eased the clay cylinder into his feeble grasp. The elder twin tested his brow for fever; satisfied by the coolness of his skin, he pulled up a seat and gestured to his companion to do the same. Only belatedly did the elf-knight note this second was Echoriath, who proffered a plate of his favorite lemon and poppy-seed biscuits. 

If only his own transgressions against the bashful elf could be so easily forgiven.

“Well met, gwanur,” Elrohir rasped, then drank amply from his mug to assuage his still-raw throat. “And you as well, young one.” 

“We encountered Legolas,” Elladan explained, as greeting. “Though I am glad for his chance to take leisure, I wondered at your readiness to pass a lonely afternoon, so I came hence.” 

“I am glad of it,” Elrohir smirked at him. “I was too bold in dismissing him.” 

His argent eyes turned on his sober nephew, who surprisingly betrayed no hint of timidity. Indeed, if aught the yet humble elf appeared entirely possessed of himself, gracious, patient, but resolved. He had not come so randomly calling, nor in suit with his father’s chores. He was all too evidently determined to champion a perhaps familiar cause. Elrohir was so impressed by this newborn maturity, this poised stateliness, that he could naught but bear him out. 

“Your air seems much improved, Ada-Hir,” Echoriath judged kindly. “Please forgive my intrusion on your rest, I seek not to further your troubles.” 

“You are no trouble, Echoriath,” he assured him. “Indeed, I am glad to speak with you. There are some matters on which I wish to appraise myself. Firstly, and most dear: how fares Tathren?” 

Though taken aback by this outright request, the builder was little ruffled. Indeed, the smile that overswept his visage at mention of his beloved would put the sun itself to shame for hot, resplendent affection. This one’s love, at the least, proved devastatingly true.

“He wavers between anger and a pale indifference, to mask his sorrow,” Echoriath bluntly replied. “He feels abandoned, but knows too well how his decisions… how *our* decisions… have blackened his name in this house.”

“His name is not black,” Elrohir insisted. “Merely grayed some. I myself wish to wash such cloying tarnish away soonest, through reconciliation. I regret that my illness too forcibly beleaguered me when last we spoke. I had hoped he would persist in his efforts to aid us… but I fear my words were too bruising to him. Yet I cannot claim my heartbreak to be any less… visceral.” His stomach lurched, as if in recognition of this prolonged pain; he momentarily lowered his eyes to conceal its effect upon his pallid countenance. 

Echoriath nodded sagely, then essayed: “I have not come to plead for him, Ada-Hir, as he is well capable of requesting such an audience with you. I came merely to… to assure you that his heart is well and truly kept, that I have not been weirded into abeyance by my introduction to the sultry arts, that I go forth into adventure by virtue of a longing in ample evidence before Tathren made any of his love returned. Though we are solidly promised, I have no intention of officiating our betrothal for many a year. I know my limitations, as well as… as the longstanding record of my regard for my cousin. I cannot claim that had no bearing on our initial dalliance… but I have known the force and ardor of his love. It is pure and bountiful as Elbereth’s light. It is… everything.” 

By the end of his proclamation, both fathers were rapt, yet pensively so. Elladan veritably glowed with pride; Elrohir himself evidenced a wisp of a smile. 

“My son is fortunate to be bequeathed such a heart as yorn, young one,” Elrohir answered him. “As I am grateful for your favor, on this delicate afternoon. And indeed, you have impressed the heat and honor of your love for him upon me, your readiness for such a fraught journey as you proposed to undertake.” He paused, then, his silver eyes tinged with blue melancholy. “Yet the fact of your love, while heartening to me, does not excuse the deception that has been spun around us, nor Tathren’s disavowal to assist his incipient leave-taking, nor… nor the equally vital fact that the trust between fathers and son has been completely severed. These cares are incidental to our present conversation, and cannot be remedied by such a timely visit as yours.” 

“He fears you have forsaken him,” Echoriath insisted. “That he is not welcome in his home.” 

“His home, I believe, is with you,” Elrohir smirked stealthily. “As for his childhood house, that is in Arda, far away. Yet in the berth of his fathers, he is always welcome. They sought only to let anger and sickness abate, in days past, so as to properly and fairly counsel him. Their love of him will never fade, no matter how their tempers rage or their innards revolt.” Betraying a smile of his own and seemingly satisfied, the young elf vividly bristled with the need to run home, to relieve his beloved’s own, personal agony. “You are grown brave, Echoriath, to face me so. This bodes well for the coming journey. I wish you every happiness, dear one, and fulfillment besides. Know that, when the time comes, you yourself will be wholeheartedly welcomed into the intimate ranks of our small family.” 

With a sprightly gasp, Echoriath sprung up to bow to the elf-knight. “I am honored by your favor, Ada-Hir.” 

“Now go,” his elder instructed, with a touch of mirth. “And please take Tathren the lovely biscuits. Though I am grateful for your pains, I cannot yet stomach them, and they are, if I recall, of his preference as well as my own.” 

“Indeed, they are,” Echoriath seconded, before bounding out so enthusiastically the twins shared an affectionate laugh. 

“He is a wonder,” Elladan shook his bemused head. “In truth, I fear I may be beset by a similar illness, when he departs. I know not how I will bear the years without him.” 

“He has ever been your treasure,” Elrohir solemnly agreed. “Forgive me, gwanur, if in my throes I slighted your genial son. I was…” 

“Fear not, my gentle one,” Elladan assured him. “I took no umbrage. Both Glorfindel and I begged Tathren to let us accompany him, that fateful afternoon, but he would none of our objections. His tenacity makes him a bold adventurer… but I, too, worry at the swiftness of their devotion.”

“I had wondered at your so ready acceptance of their light-headed deceptions,” Elrohir remarked, as his brother poured him another round of tea, then one for himself. 

“I had no choice but to accept it,” Elladan sighed, with some evidence of frustration. “They were so ruddy with their love, so keen… and Glorfindel had guessed it, so to condemn them, I needed condemn my own mate… his love, his support in this tense time is too vital to me. Though I have taken… measures… to assure he will not repeat such an infraction.” 

“I have no doubt!!” Elrohir exclaimed, feeling his cheer blooming anew. 

“I pray, gwanur, that you may be reconciled with your dearest child,” Elladan whispered, taking his brother’s hand. “That you may look forward to the second child that will soon bless your binding. I pray the Valar for us all to weather this troubled time.” 

Elrohir fell silent, content to be succored by his twin and unwilling to comment on the potential for a second child. His waning mind could not focus on such an abstraction, on a possibility that had become vague with the ending of his fever. For the fever had ended, he knew and he believed Legolas also suspected, with his break with Tathren, forever quenched by this calamity. 

He knew not whether this was, in truth, an uncounted blessing. 

* * *

Legolas plucked his bowstring absently, reached for another arrow. The target was beginning to resemble a bouquet of Mirkwood-colored fletches, as the only variation this master archer could find for himself was in the resurrection of a long-waylaid quiver and a bundle of abused arrows. Yet even these hit their mark, despite his crushing fatigue, despite the ever-gnawing thought of Elrohir left alone when so poorly, despite the skin-pricking presence that waited behind, until the father’s patience was undone and he was finally granted an audience with his Adar. Tathren had been lurking by the stump-stools for nearly two hours, considering how to make his play even while admiring his sire’s deadly acuity, relentless and taciturn as he appeared. 

Legolas had refused to acknowledge him, but not out of spite. He simply had not yet figured out his own appraisal of the circumstance between them, now that Elrohir was on the mend and his rage had reinvented itself as terrible confusion. He knew only too well the restlessness that primed a young elf of Silvan blood, having been one himself. Tathren had not been entirely off the mark when he suggested Elrohir did not properly countenance his Silvan nature. 

Though his son had been raised in both imperial Imladris and colonial Ithilien, he was by his very soul a child of Greenwood, a humble and voracious woodland elf. His son came from a long line of intemperate elves – Oropher, Thranduil, and he himself, not to mention he was half Dunedain. Though much of his character had been carved out by the constant attention of his Noldor father, Legolas understood all too well, and had witnessed memorable incidents, where his learned Imladrian nobility had directly clashed with the Silvan urgings within him, with often volatile, overwhelming, and uncontrollable results. Their recent confrontation had been, upon some later consideration, a perfect scenario for the proving of this theory (how Elrohir would take pride in his fashioning that last thought alone); Tathren’s fiery love for his cousin and his self-pride as an elf of means coming into direct conflict with his respect for his fathers, with his devotion to his family, and the knowledge of his own judgmental error. 

Legolas’ arrow went slightly north of the center, when he thought on how his son must have roasted himself, this past week, for – alternatively – his insubordination towards his clueless fathers *and* his failure to properly convince them of the nobility of his purpose, of this notion of worthiness that eternally besot him. This, Legolas believed, he must have inherited from Elrohir’s influence, for he has never for a moment felt himself lesser than either the Noldor or his esteemed mate. 

He launched off a penultimate shot, then restrung his bow, back-flipped off a nearby log, and stripped off the entire center ring with a vicious mid-air strike. He landed to an appraising whistle, the crunch of tentative steps in the grass behind. 

“It appears my string has frayed,” Legolas commented casually to the wrought presence. “Will you clear the target?” 

As he plunked down on the log to tend to his bow, he watched as Tathren studiously yanked the arrows out of the taut hide of the target, examining each for damage before collecting those fallen on the lawn. The ghostly sun loomed behind filmy clouds, hung low over the horizon, its amber rays burnishing a haloed crown around his comely child’s hair. Legolas was again blindsided by feeling, perhaps with too much facility, too readily did he long for conciliation. Their misery had begun with his pride, he reminded himself, with a mindful of flattery and paternal self-indulgence. Yet as his son hurried over, his task complete, with a swiftness that only amplified his too-evident apprehension, Legolas could not keep himself from echoing the fulsome thoughts that had once urged him out of the banquet hall. 

When he took the arrows from his gently trembling son, he replaced them with a firm clasp. 

“I had come to flatter you,” he began, staring straight into wide, watering aqua eyes. “Not to spy. You mustn’t think… I would not conscience espionage, no matter what I suspected. But I did not suspect you. I had no idea of it, truly, until… I had admired the boldness of your protective action, against that oafish elf. Your beauty, child of my siring, on that heady night. I wanted but to… to compliment you, on the sterling elf you have become. That is why I sought you out, that is why I discovered you, there.”

“I did not merit such acclimations then,” Tathren murmured, cowed by his forthrightness. “As I do not merit them now. How you can yet speak them is a mystery, Adar, when I have so grievously…” 

“Hush, pen-neth,” Legolas quieted him. “Take your ease on this simple log and find your peace with me.” 

With a vigorous nod, Tathren sat beside him. He fought to calm his flaring emotions, ever the wood-elf at heart. Legolas held tight to his hands, raptly observing the raucous play of feeling over his son’s grave visage. When his features eased into steady compliance, avid, yet penitent, blue eyes found their match in his own. 

“I know not how to right the wrong I have done you, Adar,” Tathren haltingly essayed. “I fear that Ada-Hir is forever lost to me.” 

“Your transgression has long been forgiven, ioneth,” Legolas assured him cautiously. “Yet, like my bowstring, our bond remains frayed. We feel we are not wound together, in trust and in paternal intimacy, as we once were. Your Ada-Hir is especially anxious at this sudden unwinding, as you are not tied to him through the siring bind.” 

“Ever have I adored Ada-Hir,” Tathren insisted, with an urgency that stung, such was its ardor. “I did not mean to injure him, nor you, Ada. I wanted only to-”

“For your love to bloom in the shelter of secrecy,” Legolas interrupted him. “Aye, we did hear you that incident eve, nin bellas. I understand the concerns that caused such a misjudgment, for I believe that it was one. We would not, perhaps, have approved your courting of your cousin, but we would have accepted it, had you come directly to us with knowledge of your feelings. As it stands, there are two vows broken, and these are no little vows.” He paused a moment, rested another hand atop that already entwined with his son’s. “Both your Ada-Hir and I are committed to restoring you into trust, to sussing out the thorns that prick you so that you feel you cannot trust us. This work is meddlesome and often treacherous, pricked as we may be by similar, yet invisible thorns. But we vow to you that we will see it done, if for love of you alone, nin pen-ind. Yet I fear… that the re-soldering of our trusting bond will not be completed within three paltry weeks time.” 

Tathren’s eyes moistened anew in the face of his fathers’ undeserved, unwavering devotion to him, but he softly shook his head. 

“It cannot be,” he whispered, clutching to his father’s hands as if to a branch amidst the rapids. “I cannot stay. Though I am abashed at the love you yet bear me and I know how cruelly I have broken my vow… I cannot forsake him, Ada. I cannot let him venture out without my support. It will break him!!” 

Legolas sighed, but did not himself loose his hold. He had known Tathren would not alter his decision – he was too enflamed to even countenance such a choice – he had only hoped to present some alternate solutions. These, however, involved a Council whose will championed others suffering before his own domestic cares… and by the flint amidst his son’s glistening eyes, he was sure Echoriath could not be moved to stay. He would, nevertheless, make Tathren entirely aware of the chances he took in leaving them. 

“Your very vigilance over your beloved’s care, ioneth, speak to me of a mate’s devotion,” Legolas acknowledged. “But allow this caring mate, if you will, to relate some of the overbearing anxieties that often beleaguer his own husband, and learn you some in regards to the strength of fatherly bonds. My own, you may be surprised to learn, is still tenaciously strong. I daily battle with the lure of my Adar’s flame, to make right with even he who has behaved so abominably. That is perhaps why I sought him out, even after the attempts on your barely nascent existence. Why I, in the months after your begetting, took so long in departing from Mirkwood to return to my mate, even though the evidence of his culpability was extreme and my child was growing steadily. In the first weeks after conception, a sire is haunted by the song of his impending child and is forever heartened by the memory, once that child is born.”

“I remember your note,” Tathren admitted, as a rapscallion tear escaped him. “I will always remember…” 

“Yet your bond with Ada-Hir is far more tenuous,” Legolas pursued. “Though he cared for you from earliest infancy, you are not so bound to him. Ever has he feared this, ever has he been plagued, by nightmares, by waking shadows in times of your disobedience, that one day you will forsake him. He is too acutely aware of the wedge that has been forced between you, since you first took to adventuring. How with each journey, you further distance yourself from him, in order to survive it unhindered. I have marked well, Tathren, how you no longer confide in him as you once did, how you rebuke his questions beforehand and fail to recount all but the liveliest tales of your adventuring upon your return. Before your majority, he was your most intimate confidant. At present, he and I are equaled, in your regard.” 

“Would you not that it be so?” Tathren asked bluntly, avoiding his insinuations of distrust of his other father. 

Legolas took his time in replying: “I am full aware of my shortcomings where your nurture is, and has been, concerned. I am not, by nature, an open elf. I allowed my resentment of my own father’s actions to darken our relations, especially in your early years. Indeed, I feel that particular trouble was only put to bed last summer.” With a sigh, Tathren seemed to himself admit the truth of this. “But how can I tell you, nin ind, of your Ada-Hir’s near worship of you, from the time before you were born? Since the night of our binding, he wanted a child, but did not dare broach the subject with me. When he was informed of your coming, he was, from the first moment, ebullient. He thought of little else but your needs, your future; he loved from the first thought of you, his pen-tathar.   
“I recall vividly our peaceful time in Imladris, in the years after the War. I would wake, as any other bound elf, wanting for my lover at dawn’s first light. Elrohir would have already stolen into your bedchamber to fetch you. I would turn groggily around to find him tucked up against the headboard, sprightly babe in arms, cooing to you, informing you of what diplomatic endeavors would occupy our day. Rare was the day he would spend without you by his side, in those first, tender years. It was he who encouraged me to curl up with the both of you and tell of our past adventures, to steal some vital time with you each morn, before the onslaught of duties swept us up. In later years, when you needed schooling, I had several quarrels with him over the daily duration of your studies, the apparent ‘paucity’ of your instructors’ talents, and the solitary playtime you required. But he was never greedy when it came to your time, he merely required the best for his dearest one. He loves you wholly and blindly, ioneth, and for this he suffers now. This sickness is not simply the result of his fever, the drug, or his repressed anger, but the gutting fear that he will never again be in your confidence, that he has lost that one grace forever. This is the pain he will not allow himself to swallow, that he seeks to purge from his very soul over and over again.” 

Faced with the twin daggers of this poignant tale and its harrowing consequence on his father’s health, Tathren’s very heart was stabbed woefully deep. He struggled to restrain his emotions and bear the blame as a warrior might, but at his core he was of a compassionate nature, so tears soon streamed down his sallow cheeks. 

“The memory of his… his… it has not faded from me,” Tathren confessed, wrecked with sobs. “In truth, I have had need of him, but I… I thought a worthy elf took his majority in hand and did not… did not allow himself to be weakened…” With a bleat of exasperation, he bowed his head. “I know not what I thought…” 

“Is that truly the cause of your distance, ioneth?” Legolas considered for him. Every inch of his skin longed to fully embrace his son, but he knew the power of his message would not be felt as surely in his arms. “An elf who has no ties to home can come and go as he pleases. Your absences were facilitated by this evasive attitude towards both your Ada-Hir and I, myself. You are fortunate Echoriath travels with you, but I fear what might occur if you and he are parted on future journeys, for some reason of duty or calamity. This trend of your natural instinct strikes to the very core of the bind you would forge with your beloved. I have seen how terribly Elrohir has weathered this way of yours… I cannot imagine even the most heartfelt of conciliations will be soldered true, before this latest, prolonged absence.” Legolas laid the choice out plain before him, so that there would be no mistaking him. “If you cannot win back Ada-Hir’s trust in the coming weeks, Tathren, the most cherished times before you, between you – at the time of your binding, the birth of your own children, through eternity - may very well *be* lost forever, as you fear.” 

At Tathren’s look of absolute despair, he gave in to his longing and fervently hugged his son to his chest. 

* * *

Imperious Ithil loomed above, as a pearl swathed in the black depths of ocean. Her gauzy cast beamed through the skylight above their bathing chamber, a diaphanous veil rippled by the steaming tub beneath. Bouquets of lily-lipped candles, in lieu of the five-pronged chandeliers favored by those of Elrond’s house, adorned ledges cut into in the shale walls, left coarse when scored from the seaside cliffs. With the open-mouthed, oval bath brimming with froth and misting the air, the effect was as if entering an enchanted marshland. 

With a blush of pride, Echoriath surveyed the spellbinding result of his slight of domestic necromancy, winked at the complicit moon, then spirited away to lure his beloved within. 

The fog of despair that had surrounded Tathren this last, arduous week had turned dense and ominous as a storm cloud upon his return that eve. Though reconciled with his sire, his efforts to mend with both his fathers had been once again hindered by the very illness he believed himself to have caused. After the cataclysmic burden of immediate conciliation Legolas had thrust upon him that very afternoon, Tathren had accompanied him back to their willow-shroud abode, in hopes of precipitating the long-overdue conversation between himself and his Ada-Hir. The elf-knight, however, after an intense discussion with his twin, had been guided back to his bed and yet slept there, the day exhausting to one so feeble. 

While Echoriath had stuck to their apartments, believing him but moments from return, Tathren had waited-out this sudden fatigue in his fathers’ home. During this fractious time, the young adventurer had faced the scorn of his extended family, all rallied to the common cause of Elrohir’s health. Legolas had been soft with him, but fretted over his mate’s condition and thus had little time for the consolation of others. Elrond had been stern; though the Lord had no quarrel with his grandson’s participation in the expedition at hand, nor did he lecture on the perils of love between close kin, he was bewildered by the deterioration of his most righteous son and could not keep his sharpness sheathed when addressing his grandchild. 

This overt resentment, however, had been preferable to the mournful silence that had beset his gracious grandmother. The ethereal lady of Imladris, yet grieved by the loss of her only daughter without proper farewell, recalled all too vividly the drowning sorrow that had led to her leave from Arda, which proved eerily similar to Elrohir’s throes. She had had the sanctuary of Valinor to gentle her; if Elrohir suffered so in Aman, there was no land across the sea to succor him, none but the Halls of Mandos. Yet her blithe nature could not countenance any harshness towards her needful grandson, but neither could she conscionably offer him solace, so she crept about the kitchens and spoke not a word to any. Her grave stare and blanched visage had said volumes enough. 

Eventually, Legolas had urged them all out, as he believed his mate would sleep through the night and would conscience no disturbances, well-meant or accidental. Tathren had lurched through their entrance as though shackled in irons, grumbling like an ungainly cave troll. At present, his withered frame was bent over Echoriath’s desk, scrawling off a letter in a swordman’s brute hand. The chain around his neck hung free of his open-collared tunic, the ring sagging down towards the parchment as with the weight of Sauron’s One. Had their betrothal so burdened him? Would he loose himself of their impending bind? Though Echoriath could naught but speculate at his beloved’s state of mind, he yet could, as any proper mate should, definitively work to improve it. 

He had modeled his ministrations after the most hallowed couple in his acquaintance, Legolas and Elrohir themselves. Often had he heard his brother wax rather poetic on how his uncles should instruct others in the techniques of remedial coupling, the soothing of a mate’s woes through doting carnality. Cuthalion had not skirted the details, either, though Echoriath chose to remain oblivious as to his gleaning methods. Upon seeing Tathren so forlorn, he had decided to pay tribute to his ailing betters through the fleshly healing of their son, though he yet wondered at their approval of such measures. 

With a grunt, Tathren jabbed the quill into its cobapple and buried his swollen face in his hands. Peering over his hunched frame, Echoriath perceived that the letter in question was addressed, in a host of endearments, to his Ada-Hir. The darkling elf could only guess at its anguished contents, but these were not of his concern. Instead, he burrowed securing arms around his beloved’s waist and nuzzled into the crook of his neck, his nose precipitously piqued by the musky scent of wildgrass that ever wafted from him. Tathren jostled his shoulders to shrug him off, but Echo clung tight, until he heard the blonde elf’s breath catch hard as he swallowed back the brunt of tears. 

“Meleth, you are worn raw,” Echoriath murmured behind his quivering ear, his lover attuned to his potential distress even mired in his own. 

“If I am to suffer as he,” Tathren bleated. “Then so be it.” 

“Ada-Hir himself would say other,” he insisted. 

“I care not,” Tathren countered morosely. “I wait but in vigil to aid him. I will have no peace so long as he is sickly, if only in homage to his care.” 

“To weary yourself further will only prolong both your agony,” Echoriath reasoned, to one whom reason had perhaps quitted some time ago. “Ada-Hir will bear witness to your torment and be compelled to save his tongue, so nothing will be resolved between you. And you, melethron-nin, though I adore you with every breath of my being, are flint-fired when properly rested. I fear the combustive alchemy of frayed son and frail-witted father will not lend itself to the blunt conversation required between you.” Echoriath nipped the bone of his jowl through a film of translucent skin. “Your Adar does not deserve your distemper any more than you deserve his solemn resignation. Come, meleth, and be heartened by the capable hands of which your loving has crafted mine own.” 

When Tathren quickened to him, Echoriath kissed him deeply. This bold overture blindsided the golden elf; whips of biting need flayed across his chest and thighs, as an invasive tongue braised over his own. A desperate want blazed through him, broiling off any lingering treacle of remorse and sweetening him for the syrupy flood of his desire for his only one. Their mouths were hotly engaged from the cusp of the desk to the cove of the bathing chamber, where Tathren broke off only to gasp at his fairytale surroundings. 

“Why have you done this?” he rasped, sadness ever-threatening in the face of such formidable consideration. 

“Hush,” Echoriath whispered, stopping his agape lips with another smoldering kiss. “Too long has your satiny skin ‘scaped my covetous touch, the love we daily battle for gone unfulfilled. I have not known a week’s abstinence from our relations since first they began, seven days without your soulful regard is seven days too long. I will not go another night without burning with you, melethron, without being singed and sundered by your most tawdry affections.” As if to sear his demand into his very mouth, Echoriath’s tongued him again. “If I truly have your heart, tathrelasse, then you will forget yourself and surrender to me.” 

With a shrewd, saucy eye, Echoriath watched his lover’s flush face for silent acquiescence. With a wisp of his lashes, it was given. 

The darkling elf was suddenly bequeathed a patience his companion little felt. Tathren’s clothes were stripped as husks from an eave of corn, leaving only the flaxen silk of his loose hair. Echoriath leisurely lead the golden elf up the steps to the petal-strewn bath, scented with roses and lavender springs. If the tranquil waters smelt like the purest bliss he’d known in some considerable time, their heated depths were even more exquisite, the perfect balm for his wrought, aching limbs. With a flamboyant rip, Echoriath shed his own sarong and slipped in behind, his slender form barely distressing the seamless surface. 

When Echo drew him back to wet his hair, Tathren nearly melted into the bath, into the arms of his sage one, whose instincts in the matter of his care were proving awesomely acute. For an absent moment, he let himself float, releasing the last of his belligerence into the ether and cleansing his spirit of heartache. Knowing hands found him; soon, but not too soon. They wrung a spill from his hair, then tucked the sultry locks aside in favor of the smooth plain of his back. Not a muscle was left unmolested by Echoriath’s agile fingers, the sensuality of the massage only enhanced by the oil that anointed him. 

Yet even one so masterfully controlled as his beloved could not long hide his own arousal. The insistent member would brush against his buttocks concomitant with the more vigorous kneads of his twin thumbs, causing the ripe elf to groan, catch himself, then pull contritely away. Despite Tathren’s subsequent mewls of protest – for he needed to be taken without delay – Echoriath was determined not to indulge himself until his beloved was as lax as an uncoiled rope. His own erection wanted for those lissome fingers, for their tease and taunt, even more hungrily than he wanted impalement on his lover’s renown shaft. When Echoriath moved up to work his pulsating temples, he collapsed himself back against him, rolling his hips to a bawdy rhythm his cousin soon found irresistible. 

“Mount me,” he pleaded, by now too far gone to be delicate. “*Saes*, Echo.” 

“Nay,” Echoriath protested without conviction. “Too brute. I must be salved to fully sheathe myself.” 

“Aye, sheathe yourself,” Tathren moaned, too caught in the notion to fully comprehend him. “Soonest, melethron.” 

The darkling elf’s hips took on a will of their own, grinding in counterpoint to Tathren’s gyrations to maximize the fricative flares of carnal sensation. In but a sparely week, the control he’d prided himself on having earned through months of harmonious pleasuring proved too swiftly beyond his body’s current capabilities, his reason-dampening responsiveness to even the lap of Tathren’s sodden hair up his sternum enough to thoroughly tantalize him. Any breach of his lover would be mercifully quick, as his fearsomely swollen member already throbbed with want of release. 

As did the golden elf that thrashed about his lap. Echoriath belatedly recalled, somewhere amidst the haze, that he’d not so much as cupped his lover’s plum-fat bollocks since their first, incendiary kiss. Grappling for hold of those buck-wild hips, he cursed as he slid his own rapacious engorgement home, into the moist, molten core of his beloved one. Snaking legs around his lover’s to lock Tathren against him and ramming his already spurting head into his sacred crevice, he fisted the golden elf’s hard-swollen shaft with artless, beauteous abandon, until he bayed his climax as vociferously as an entire pack of wolves. Echoriath barked out his own soon after, panting, wanton, and relieved to hear his lover sigh in satiation. 

They held thusly together for endless minute, loathe to halve themselves of the whole they had momentarily become. 

*

Another spate of tenacious tapping stirred Tathren from his light doze, before the blithe heat of Echoriath, limbs coiled possessively around him, could lure him into an entirely enveloping slumber. Splayed before the hearth like a pair of playfully amorous pups, the roaring fire kept away the last of winter’s chill, lit the sorrow-shroud room as if with the bloom of their desire. Their rambunctious, fevered loving had followed them from the bath, onto the bear pelt, the scorch of melding bodies burning off excess moisture as readily as the flames. 

Their brute physicality had scored his very bones of sadness; the blood pummeled forth upon his third impalement, the bruises to his collar, the scars torn across his back testament to the vicious, worshipful catharsis spurned on by his lover’s care. Echoriath had evidenced the full rage of his heart that night, only such potent, incurable emotion could have roused him from misery. Tathren felt cleansed of guilt, of blame, the safeguarded evolution of a love such as theirs worth any, every price. Echo had used him as only he knew, relentless though ever sensually attuned, instinct overcoming intellect, reason choked off by a primal paw, until both had been utterly erotically consumed. 

Only when his soft, scarlet member had been gently extracted had the truth of their ravaged coupling seized his brittle beloved. The shock had whipped him wicked; the tender elf had wept violently. Tathren had kissed him senseless, avowed his own satisfaction with their tempest-loving, until his Echo had sagged in his vigilant arms and fallen into a heavy sleep. The spell of twilight sands had but begun to mesmerize, when some unfathomable visitor beckoned at the door. 

Fearing his father beset by some new, more callow mischief, Tathren carefully scooped up his listless love, cocooned him into a quilt on the divan, then scanned the shadowy room for sight of his sarong. As he did so, he noted the purpling streaks that trailed him across the rug and thought better of such paltry concealment. Pleading patience from the messenger, he hastened into the bathing chamber, swept a sodden cloth over the remnants of seed and gore that already flaked upon him, and tugged on a waiting robe. He knotted the last of the sash even as he fumbled with the latch, swishing open the door without thought to who might be so intrusive in the dead of night. 

No rosewater nor lavender oil could have suitably prepared him for Elrohir.

If his father objected to the too glaring cause of his tarry, he well masked his reproach. The elf-knight merely arched a knowing brow and silently implored his aid, hunched as he was over a flimsy-looking cane. Any hesitation Tathren felt in coddling him was immediately whisked away by the biting wind, which stole into his hearth-heated house like a beggar seeking shelter. He gathered his feeble father against his side and guided him within, unable to resist a fleeting kiss to his crown, as he lowered him into an armchair. Elrohir’s silver eyes instantaneously watered at the gesture, which told Tathren of the stresses that beset his sage father, of his strange vulnerability. When Elrohir cast his look aloft and rallied his senses, Tathren remembered the bloody rug. As he rolled up the betraying pelt, he prayed his too observant father had not yet noted the telltale stains and wondered at his state of mind. He was sure somnambulant Echoriath had not gone unremarked, should he carry his beloved into their bedchamber or first offer his father some tea? Instead, he dragged another chair by the fireside.

“He is sweetly, in slumber,” Elrohir hushly praised. “Though even there his regal visage brands him a prince of the Noldo tribe, my brother’s lush features refined by pure elven grace. A beauty.” Tathren stilled, waiting for the axe to fall. “Tis little wonder you adore him.” 

“I *do*, Ada,” Tathren swore, despite himself. “I do adore him.” 

“Then you are both blessed,” Elrohir commented, somewhat enigmatically. “The light of Earendil shines upon you, pen-tathar, as your Naneth foresaw on your birth night. From the orc fields before Mount Doom, your uncle saw the beam of the silmaril above and cleaved to me, even as the mountain bled its fire, the Dark Lord’s tower crumbled before our eyes… the very moment of your break into the world. A portent of his acceptance of you as our kindred, a sign… his blessing. The Fourth Age of Elves, here in the Undying Lands, heralded by the birth of a Sinda child, to be raised by Sinda and Noldo. A new life for our reunited people, for peace among elfkind. Your very heart seeks to reap of this blessing, to continue the Valar’s intended healing of our people’s woes through your prophetic adventuring, through the expression of that bountiful heart, through its eventual binding with one bequeathed such gifts as you cannot possibly conceive of. You, Legolasion.” Eyes as glossy as a mithril shield met his disbelieving own. “You, my son.” 

Startled, and greatly unsettled by such talk of omens, Tathren was dumbstruck for a considerable time. He woke from his mind’s groggy meanderings, when Elrohir cleared his throat. 

“Would you not care for some tea, Ada?” he inquired, almost timidly. 

“The wretched drink flows through my very veins!” the elf-knight mused, with some faint mirth. “Have you not some fine Forochel vintage about? The glacier’s affect on the vine is said to hearty the grape, and thus cool fever’s flush.” 

“I may have secreted a flask or two away,” Tathren indulged him. “Though if you breathe a word of this allowance to Ada-Las, I will not wake another dawn.” 

“Agreed,” Elrohir winked, complicit, as he hurried away to fetch the ice wine. 

Not in his most generous imagining of the situation could Tathren have predicted his father would be so kindly with him. Even if his momentary milk would be later curdled by condemnation, he was glad of the familiar tone his elder currently employed. His fondness was implicit; for that alone Tathren could have cried out his heart, Valar-blessed as it may be. He was soon curled into his own armchair, nursing a flute of Forochel and waiting on his father’s judgment of the vintage. He was relieved to note that the wine but amplified the rose of the elf-knight’s cheek, his noble countenance improved by a turn out of doors, by a chaste drink. Though sluggish illness yet weighted him, his spirit was lightened of some imperceptible, unaccountable burden; Tathren hoped this conversation would ease him ever more. 

Ease them both, for certes. 

At present, the wine itself seemed not to overly impress the darkling elf as much as the flute that contained it. 

“How cunning,” Elrohir reflected, admiring the craftsmanship. “A bloom of willow leaves for my pen-tathar. Exquisitely rendered, at that. A gift?” 

“Indeed,” Tathren replied, bashful. 

“Ah,” Elrohir nodded, a smile twisting his lips. “From your lover?”

“He was but my cousin, then,” Tathren admitted. 

Elrohir accepted this, a keen glint to his eye, but then turned worryingly sober. 

“If you are to be bound, ioneth,” Elrohir intoned with studied gentility. “Then there are… circumstances, of which you must be appraised. I know not if Echoriath himself has realized them, but that is not my concern. My brother reminded me of a great many things, just this afternoon, that in my sickness I had overlooked, and though he has not perhaps spoken of them with his own son, I would be remiss in allowing my own to bind himself to said elf without knowledge of them. I wish I had some… some solid notion of their effect, of their potential between you, but only the Valar hold such secrets, and those hallowed ones hold them dear as their entire, eternal design.” 

“Ada, you frighten me,” Tathren exclaimed, eyes rapt upon him. “Tell me, please, of this… these godly affairs…” 

“Very well,” Elrohir consented, settling in to his chair and taking a long sip of the wine. “Your grandsire, Elrond, inherited the gift of foresight from his naneth, Elwing. She was one of the most powerful seers our people have ever known. She lived in the time of greatest strife among elfkind, before the race of men became a reckoning force in Arda. When she came to possess the vaulted silmaril… only the Valar could best her powers. She was the oracle of our kind in a ruthless time. Lit by the silmaril, she foresaw ages to come: her son Elros’ timely choice, the Last Alliance of Elves and Men, the Shadow’s rise and eventual fall. Her prophecies were transcribed by the seafarers of Sirion, who passed them on to Cirdan, and through his son Erestor, they came to Elrond. Even when he doubted her predictions most, he cleaved to them. As ages passed, he told none of her acuity of vision, none of their very existence. Save his mate, to whom he is ever bound in truth. Upon his leave-taking from Imladris, thinking all of the prophecies come alive, he passed the volume and the knowledge onto his successor. My brother shared this tome with me, that fateful year, though I have forgotten much of which I read.” 

“But if these predictions have come to pass,” Tathren interrupted him. “Then what use are they to us now?” 

“All but one has been fulfilled, ioneth,” Elrohir quietly explained, moved as he was by the knowledge he would soon impart. “The last I spoke earlier, that the Sinda child, the herald of peace born at the Shadow’s fall, would come upon the Blessed Realm as a balm to an open wound. Gold would be his mantle fair, and forever would he seek out the ore of greatest treasure to him. Golden flower. Golden mane. Golden eyes.” Tathren gasped, but did not halt his father’s recounting. “If the Sinda child finds the treasure within his heart, when flames are melded and our fractious people one again, then time will take on this one’s golden hue, and all of Aman will flower under his touch, and those of Mandos will be free of the Halls of Waiting, and the Valar will quiet upon their mountain top, and peace will reign among the Children of Eru.”

By the end of this recital, Tathren was agape. “Can… can you be sure that… that *I* am… the child. The Sinda child.” 

“Your grandsire has foreseen it,” Elrohir imparted. “As well as the White Lady, your foremother Galadriel. You are the champion of the fallen, of the sick and the slain. When the prophecy is fulfilled… none among elfkind will pass on. All illnesses may be cured, all wounds remedied, all feas forever bound to the flesh that holds them.”

“Ada…” Tathren murmured, nearly sundered by the might of this discovery. “H-how… how must I fulfill this prophecy?” 

“We know not,” Elrohir sighed, wishing he himself understood this delicacy. “I have lately consulted with my Adar and Erestor, after you were so precipitously dismissed from our home. We cannot say which path, which choice is for the better, merely that you need not agonize over every decision. The Valar will guide you, they wish to see their people as one. All that we truly know is that… it appears Echoriath was destined to be your mate.” 

“How now?” Tathren demanded, his interest piqued anew by this too compelling information. 

“The Golden Flower,” Elrohir essayed cautiously. “Is the mantle of Mandos himself. In Gondolin that fell, each of the houses chose a deity as their champion. Glorfindel chose the mantle of Mandos to empower his warriors, so that they might give themselves fully to the battle at hand, in defiance of the renewing elven death. When he was subsequently slain in his battle with the Balrog, Mandos appreciated this courtesy and gave him new life. If Glorfindel had not lived again, Elladan would never have seen his love fulfilled, Echoriath would never have been born, and you… you would not love as needed, would not free our people from the Halls. You are bound to Echoriath by fate itself, even his golden eyes sign of the purpose that surrounds you both.” 

“The color of Ada-Fin’s love for Ada-Dan,” Tathren whispered reverently. “Aye, tis wondrous.” 

“Alas, that itself is but a myth, ioneth,” the elf-knight amended him. “I come now to the rub that might most prick your so very independent spirit, even more than the strictures of prophecy and destiny.”

“Go on,” Tathren encouraged him, all the more invigorated by his revelations so far. 

“Just as Cuthalion is the image of his grandmother,” Elrohir pointed out. “Though none of my siblings carry her traits, Echoriath was bequeathed, through our line, a disproportionate share of… of the Maiar blood, which comes from our kinsman Melian. His talents are ample, and faultless, almost… as sorcery. His mind is keener than even your grandsire’s. Indeed, he may be the most genial elf to yet be born of any tribe. He will play no small part in the prophecy’s fulfillment, if only in the building of cities for these elves that cannot suffer harm. His eyes are the surest sign of this overabundance of Maiar blessings.” His father paused a while, seemingly reluctant to reveal the emphatic end. “Erestor has long expected your relations to turn… intimate, though he kept this knowledge from us, as yours were the first to meet Echoriath’s eyes.” 

A creeping cold snaked through him, then, such that he could barely rasp: “Are you…?! Think you that he… he unknowingly… I have been ensorcelled!!”

“You *have*, nin bellas,” Elrohir underlined gently. “By the Valar’s will, Echoriath was endowed with the most seductive of Maiar traits, golden eyes that are known to spell those that meet them upon waking from their mother’s womb. As your Ada-Las was chosen as your sire, renown as he is for his mischievous nature, stubbornness, and intense curiosity. As such, there was no way you would not be lured into the birthing room and would fail to lock eyes with the babe. The seed of twinship was not split for your cousins to come into being, so that there would be but one intended.” Reconsidering his own words, the elf-knight chose a different tact in the face of his son’s incredulity. “The Valar above do not bend us to their will, but on occasion they stack the odds heavily in their favor, in the favor of goodness, of righteousness, of harmony. This is such an occasion. Golden flowers, of Mirkwood and of Gondolin, to love the Sons of Elrond Peredhil, an elf of Maiar descent. The suitors of golden mane, ensuring a Sinda child will be born of these unions. Golden eyes for the child who is a cousin but by affinity. There is purpose afoot, ioneth. Your purpose.” 

“But which *is* my purpose?!” Tathren bellowed, but lowered his tone when Echoriath snortled. “How can I be said to have a purpose, when even my binding mate is pre-destined, when the Valar have conspired to join us as pawns on a Battle Game board?!” 

“I would think you would be proud of such a purpose,” Elrohir remarked softly. “The Valar seem to have little intent beyond that you love your cousin. The rest will either come to pass or naught, through a confluence of effect and reaction far beyond your powers, such as they are. Your other grandsire, for one, almost upset the Valar’s design through a simple act of remorse. Have you not thought on what might have come to pass, if his murderous plots had succeeded? Echoriath born without a mate, for one.”

“I have thought on little else, in my darkest hours, since the summer,” Tathren confessed to him. “In truth, I have come to believe us… fated, to be one. The Valar’s blessings, or designs, are but an afterthought. Yet fate, too, is precariously wrought, and had Thranduil murdered me-” 

“Speak not of it,” Elrohir immediately implored him, still too weak to stomach such black thoughts. “Think on the journey to come, your growth as lovers, as future mates… these are the matters that must occupy you, that will keep you whole.” 

With no little severity, Tathren centered himself. Despite Elrohir’s vital information, the trouble between them had not been addressed. Blessed by the gods he may be, but his father’s blessing he yet lacked, and this was most precious of all. He reached for his Adar’s hand, was heartened when both were instinctively given. 

“How can I be whole, Ada, when we are yet divided?” Tathren mused. “No prophetic purpose changes how I have deliberately frayed *our* relations. How I have mocked your ever-constant trust, broken my vow of home-staying, belittled your love by my faithlessness, and kept you estranged from the most intimate knowledge of my heart. I am no elf at all, away from your regard. Forgive me, Ada.” 

At this unexpected admission, Elrohir could naught but welcome his forlorn son into his arms. Tathren cottoned to him as if he were yet a youngling, seeking out a steady hold in his upturned world. He allowed his woeful father to vent out his heart; a pact was sealed between them to keep daily appointments, until his departure. Yet even as he clung to his wearied caregiver, he could not entirely tare his eyes from the twilight elf that slumbered near, his very comely countenance crafted by Elbereth herself, to lure him, to lust for him, to love him. 

By a flicker of those bedazzling golden eyes, he had been spellbound. 

 

End of Part Ten


	11. Part 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The company departs for the Southlands.

Part Eleven

Cuthalion spied her across the room, and was instantly smitten. 

No ellon of worth could resist verdant eyes as lush as the Nevrast marshes, skin buttery as milkseed, petal-pout lips and hair of midnight luxury. As he approached the exotic-eyed ellyth, her swarthy lashes and almond shaped lids reminiscent of the ancient courtesans of Amon Rudh, he admired the contrast of her prim, sea green sheath against her florid features. Those lashes bat quick as a hummingbird’s wings, until the tiger eyes caught sight of him; a flame of yellow warning haloed the black pupil that assessed him. 

He attempted to disarm her with his gallant’s smile, but the razing eyes would have none until they concluded their exacting scrutiny of his too polished, too smug wares. Even at such a tender age, no silvery spark could long distract her; already she recognized fool from foe, miscreant from miser, true chivalry from hollow charm. Cuthalion beamed with genuine admiration at the mysterious maid before him, secretly hoping to be worthy of her favor. He dared to sweep a stray lock behind her teardrop ear, stroking the length of the lobe in the regular gesture of affection. 

She gurgled, unimpressed, and spat a juicy wad at him. 

His cheeks burned hot as lava rock, as a snickering Tathren swept in to second him. The daunting lady Miriel, but a two-month old, trilled gleefully at the sight of the golden elf, whom she probably mistook – Cuthalion inwardly grunted – for her other father. Few could doubt that this was the offspring of the meticulous Erestor, though her maidenly indignation was pure Lorien lass, like her mother. Adar’s relentless diligence and Naneth’s bemused haughtiness made for a potentially lethal combination in their demanding daughter, when in later years some foolhardy suitor might dare to call on her. What mettle of elf might best the trial of her courtship, he could not even begin to wager, though the haunting beauty of which she would eventually be possessed was in ample evidence, even in such raw form. 

In any case, the lady herself expressed a definite preference for blondes, if her giggling against Tathren’s shoulder was any indication. His brash cousin cradled the babe with a gentility he would not have foreseen, allowing her to test her newly empowered fingers on clutches of his hair and stroking her slender back with considerable finesse. Under Tathren’s patient ministrations, Miriel was soon merry as a halfling, her dazzling emerald eyes even gleaning on Cuthalion with approval. 

“See, lomeloth?” Tathren murmured against her blue temple. “Talion is not so strange. Indeed, he is much more learned than I, where the pleasing of maids is concerned.” 

“Tathren, hold your tongue!!” he griped. “There is no need of such… such indelicacies, in the presence of an elfling.” 

“Though he has much to learn of babes, I fear,” Tathren indirectly taunted him. “Especially those who have yet to comprehend the most basic conversation. You must teach him, pretty one, lest he be as blundering a father as he is a lover of males!”

Cuthalion harrumphed with such bluster that Elrond would have been glutted with pride. To think he had been heartened to learn that his cousin would join him in guardian duties this afternoon, as all of the elders were occupied in settling the first ship of newly arrived colonists from Laurelin. Rare was a time when the service of nearly all ellyth and ellon of Telperion was required, but times in the Blessed Realm were so fractious, at present, that only the younglings were spared. As this first vessel contained the largest portion of the northland children, any spare nannies and wet nurses were summoned to their humble port. When Erestor had mentioned that his sister and her mate would like to participate in the children’s settling, Cuthalion had sacrificed the tending of his horses for the afternoon to coddle the newborns. 

As the adventurers’ preparations were delayed by the precipitous advent of their Sindar guests, Tathren had also volunteered; if only to enjoy the company of his oft overlooked cousin this last time, before their imminent departure. The party had only days left to settle accounts. Each member found their waking hours coveted by a host of loved ones, their time even more precious now that the Laurelin ship had docked ahead of schedule. With daylight hours devoted to their guests, many of the elders fought through their mounting fatigue to spend vital night hours with their sons, nephews, or grandsons. His own fathers were no different, obsessing over every detail of Echoriath’s carriage from pack to broadsword to boots to water skin, leaving little time for brotherly highjinks. With his parents still quite tender over their recent quarrel, Tathren had even less allotted time for indulgence with his ever-admiring cousin, so his accompaniment this afternoon was an unexpected, and treasured, surprise. 

A time not to be wasted in one-upmanship. 

“I love males well enough,” Cuthalion insisted quietly, still easily bruised by the memory of his begetting-day escapade. “Indeed, I love my fathers, brother, companions, and cousin quite dearly. I merely wish to keep them from my bed.” He tentatively moved towards the mirthful pair, caught a lock of the little one’s hair. This time, Miriel met his wistful smile with her own ebullient one, allowing him to pet her silky head. 

Tathren, however, gazed rather fondly at his complimentary cousin. “I meant no injury, Talion.” 

“None was taken,” the silver elf replied, though his winsome gaze told a different tale. “I might attempt to hold her. What say you?” In response, he was proffered the giddy babe, who was so thoroughly tamed that she even reached out to him. Warmed by her acceptance, he gladly cuddled her close, cheered by how readily she snuggled against him. A poignant, piercing feeling gripped him, such that he was almost overcome by the need to shelter, to secure this fragile creature against the perils that yet wandered the world at large. He had never before halted his exploits long enough to consider the matter of his binding, of his own fatherhood, but one could not help be confronted by these issues when cradling such a comely babe. “Tell me, cousin, and stave your cunning tongue for a brief time. Think you… think you that I might one day be a parent equal to my own?” 

“I have no doubt of it, Talion,” Tathren assured him, gesturing towards a nearby sofa. With a vigilant eye on the bassinet that yet berthed Miriel’s slumbering, sunny-haired brother Orinath, he turned his mind to this mischief that so gloomed his cousin, who had ever before embodied the very essence of mercury. “You are fortunate that your eventual children will be begot with ease, no threat of infidelity or acquisition of suitable naneth to weaken your resolve.” 

“The acquisition of a suitable mate, my cousin, is of no little import,” Cuthalion reprimanded. “Even to one so married to the love of maids as I.” 

“Talion, I meant no fault in my taunting,” Tathren apologized, sensing his cousin’s disease. “I believe Ada-Fin and Ada-Dan are quite relieved to know that their line will continued unabated, and with little difficulty. A biding of ellon to ellon is rife with troubles, even in this advanced age. Your conviction gives them no end of peace.” 

“Would that I feel such peace, at being proved so…determined,” the silver elf sighed. He kissed the crown of Miriel’s sable hair, as if to comfort himself and not the child. “In truth… I feel I am no elf at all, but cursed with manly passions even some of the Dunedain defy. Eldarion was but a quarter elf, and he could lie quite blissfully with you, Tathren.” 

When Tathren could not argue this, for the prince’s emphatic cries still scorched his lesser dreams, he struggled for a line of reasoning that might penetrate his cousin’s defenses. Perhaps, if his attempt proved unsuccessful, he would entreat Echoriath to ply his gifted mind towards some reassurance that might satisfy his blue brother, for they could certainly not abandon him to misery in but three days time. Indeed, the very fact of their departure might hinder the renewal of his spirit. This worrying thought prompted him to essay the matter himself. 

“Not every elf is blessed with the duality of our nature,” Tathren ventured softly. “Though I cannot claim to have dissuaded, nor disliked, the occasional attentions of maids before my majority, think on your own lovely brother. He could not functionally bed an ellyth, not for all the mithril in Mirkwood’s mines. If we should desire children of our own, I know not what might come to pass, should he need be the sire. You may not be fashioned by a split of seed, but the Valar have seen to bequeath you equally nonetheless, in the matter of preferred bed-partners; neither of you can be said to be imbued with the ancient duality.” 

“But my genius lies in the art of bed-play!!” Cuthalion mewled, his forlorn visage undercutting the arrogance of the statement. “Seduction, initiation, tenderness… wild, impassioned pleasuring, these are my most hallowed of gifts, and I am kept from plying them with an entire gender of our race!! It burns me to the core, Tathren, that I cannot experience the very sensations you and Echo affect in each other on a nightly basis.”

“Verily, Talion, the two acts are startlingly similar,” Tathren informed him, unable to stifle some light amusement at his too evident jealousy of he and his Echo’s love. He began to suss the undercurrent of loneliness in his cousin’s conversation, masked as self-recrimination. “Kisses, touches, release… you cannot *become* a maid, my brave one, therefore it matters little who is engaged in your arousal. Unless, of course, the feeling you lack is that between a casual bed partner and a melethron.” 

Cuthalion groaned warily, averted his eyes. “Perhaps…” 

“You have every right to be envious,” Tathren continued, with studied delicacy. “I felt such affront myself, at times, when faced with loving fathers such as ours. And then for your own, resolutely chaste and despairingly innocent brother to successfully woo the mate of his heart despite gutting timidity… add to that a whiff of destiny and little wonder you feel the Lady herself has forsaken you. Yet you have but begun to know the world, Talion. You are privileged in that you may attempt many different employments, experience a variety of companions in your search for fulfillment, for a mate. Echoriath is locked into a pattern of the Valar’s devising, but you are free to improvise, to err, to improve yourself in a manner that yet terrifies your brother. I know this well, for it is my shoulder that his tears soak when he cannot accomplish a task to his exacting self-standards, my bed that is overcast with desolation when he is too fatigued to accomplish another elder’s insistent demand. Enjoy your liberty, nin bellas. Do not linger on what you cannot grasp, but seize what is before you. I wager that by the day of our return, you will have undertaken a host of tasks that we can only dream of.” Tathren regarded the now sleeping babe tenderly, then amended. “Indeed, perhaps the talent you seek is currently beneath your very chin.” 

With a gentle laugh, Cuthalion peered down at precious Miriel. A wave of calm washed over him, emanating from the baby’s hot body and rippling through his tense frame. He suddenly realized he would be all too content to wile away the afternoon as her rather over-ambitious pillow, while trading barbs with his sage, ample-hearted cousin. He dismissed any cloying thought of his coming leave, instead relishing the child’s warmth, Tathren’s generous counsel, and the luxury of such a nurturing home to support him. 

“She is an enchantress,” he commented wryly. “I fear we will both need of succor, when such a wise one as you departs from our woods, tathrelasse. You are the true treasure of the glade. I hope my brother cherishes you well.” 

“If he but halves my own feelings in return,” Tathren smirked to himself, his face aglow at mention of his lover’s care. “Then I am sated for an eternity.” 

They shared a complicit look, then fell into easy banter. 

* * *

Elrond stifled an unsightly yawn, but could not keep his lips from sneering. Halting his progress towards yet another candlelit conference hall, he rested his foggy head against the cool stone of the archway and allowed his droopy eyes to shut for just a second’s respite. He dared not sit, lest he slump to the floor and slumber hardily; though he did wonder if these Laurelin legions might herald his eventual passing to Mandos. Not since the War of the Ring had his energies been so depleted, his foresight called upon with routine nonchalance by those that would belittle him for it and his diplomatic skills drained of resolve in the face of such courageous, stubborn Sindar folk. 

The aggravated and little experienced leaders failed to appreciate that Telperion was not their frontier settlement, that the strictures that so chafed them also wrought a harmonious existence for his people, that the gentle forest provided for all their needs, that they were in no danger of predators, pestilence, or crop devastation. That Noldor patience and efficacy may have saved the lives of many, if welcomed in the northlands from the start. Yet how could he convince them, fraught as they were from the recent floodings, that said efficiency also bored their youth to recklessness and imperiled circumstance, that his people were plagued by caste related tensions, that each culture had their fears, fortunes, and foibles. 

He thanked the Valar for blessing him with two such able sons, then rallied his beleaguered senses. 

Elrond chose to skirt through the gardens, instead of the normal route to the High Council hall. Ithil was large as a honey-melon behind Taniquetil’s bulbous crest, the aura of divinity that emanated from the mountain peak blotted out by the golden moon, herald of summer’s balmy nights to come. As he swept through bashful jasmine boughs, vines of violet blooms, and beds of frail nightshade, he thought of his tireless mate, charged with overseeing the Healing Halls, while Erestor stole an hour or so with his children. He longed to sink into her unparalleled embrace, so blithe, so restoring, but her arms would be kept from him until the wee hours, when both would be too sundered to even essay a kiss. He had forgotten what a strength her mere presence was; how forlorn he had grown in those telltale years without her, how hopeful he was now with her near. If his naneth’s vaulted final prophecy could indeed come to pass, then he would never again need fear calamity, that some turn of fate would snatch her from him, perhaps fading him in turn. 

He could not do without her; a lesson from which he yet bore the scars. 

As he progressed along the moonlit path, he came upon, to his mild surprise, his twilight-favored grandchild. Echoriath was raptly engaged in a typically thorough explanation of seasonal weeding to his newly trained gardener, whose struggle against the heaviness of fatigue rivaled Elrond’s own. The darkling elf, however, was yet fuelled by anxiety over the proper tending of his foremother’s beloved gardens in his prolonged absence, as such Elrond need not ply his hallowed skills to foresee no rest for the green gardener this night. 

His grandson was, apparently, indefatigable. No sooner had the horn sounded from the docks, than he and his applecart were collecting spare tents from the settlement’s talans, which by noontime had been raised in the far meadow. He’d sent a party to collect fruit preserves from his larder, sharp cheese from the forge caves, and lembas fresh from Eldirwen’s ovens, then himself helped serve the simple luncheon, only taking a share at Tathren’s forceful insistence. Before the masses had finished their meal, he’d drawn up plans for a temporary water supply to the meadow; with the ready aid of his exploring companions, the system was in place by early evening. He’d absented himself from their ramshackle banquet to swim in the river, scarf down another Tathren-approved meal, then corral extraneous torches for the colonists’ compound before twilight gave way to child-panicked blackness. Tathren and the adventurers were presently entertaining some of the frontier males in the ale hall, but Echoriath was undaunted, the chores he could not accomplish this day occupying him through nighttime. Amidst this chaos, Elrond held little doubt that Tathren had discovered, through the course of his own day, tiny gifts, signs, and moments flaunting his cousin’s unwavering affection; the proud grandsire instinctively knew his genial one was kin to his Celebrian as example of a doting mate. 

His tenacious, tender grandson was in every way astonishing. 

Despite the pride that swelled within his chest, Elrond then conspired to free the haggard gardener, who he feared would not longly remember any further instructions. He strolled towards them with purpose; indeed, he had hoped to beg an audience with Echoriath before his departure, and the hush of night was as useful a time as any he might have in the fleeting days to come. His gardener bowed in deference, in acute desperation, which did not go unnoticed by the darkling elf beside him. 

“Grandsire,” Echoriath greeted him, with unrestrained affection. 

When he hugged tightly to him, Elrond felt the exhaustion he so well concealed, how the affliction of his impending leave besieged him, and thought perhaps the youngling was not so entirely indefatigable, after all. With a pregnant nod, he dismissed the now swaying gardener, loathe to lax his hold on the elf he coddled. Echoriath was just as eager to be held so affectionately, such that he forced Elrond to recall how they had not truly conversed since the revelation of his betrothal to his cousin. Tathren had himself sought him out for that quiescent discussion, but he’d only glimpsed Echoriath in passing or at formal events, preoccupied as he was with Laurelin, Council matters, and Elrohir’s illness. With a sweeping sigh, he allowed his fea to engulf his grandson as his constant arms held fast, balming the little one in the aura of ages past, in the strength of one who’d lived through their people’s greatest sorrows. Though he loved all his grandchildren with a ferocity few might acknowledge in him, this one was his pearl, the rarest jewel in his crown of worthy heirs. That he had been absent for this delicate one’s early years had pricked him something awful upon their arrival in Valinor, but twenty years ago; how he’d have relished curling up by the hearthfire with this elfling to cradle. If for this chance alone, he hoped Elrohir would overcome his fears and gift them another grandchild. 

This precious one, however, might very well fall asleep if they lingered too long, so Elrond moved to separate them, despite his yearning heart. Echoriath smiled with renewed conviction, sensing his grandsire’s acceptance of his own heart’s choice even though not a word had yet been voiced by his elder. 

“I wager you could not resist the lure of your mistress, Ithil,” Echoriath teased him. “Her ethereal grace bettered by grandmother alone.” 

“Indeed, she is a torment,” Elrond replied, complicit in his mischief. “But, alas, she is too distant. Best I take a turn with my grandson, and forget her charms.” Echoriath giggled, as he wove an arm around his lithe waist, though beneath his skin was a ridge of taut muscle. “Where is your beloved tonight, nin pen-ind?” 

“In the ale hall, making merry,” the darkling elf informed him, though he held no fear of the novelty of the news on his all-knowing grandsire. “In truth, I pray he will emerge unscathed. Those Laurelin folk are fierce, even to one of common blood. And he a Sinda Peredhil!”

“They are weary,” Elrond commented. “Fear not for our golden one. They will revel with alacrity till they collapse where they stand. Perhaps we should send an envoy of blankets and morning broth to the ale hall…” His grandson laughed again, the aftershocks rippling delightfully through him. “Do you not long for his company, these last nights at home?” 

“I will have years of his company!” Echoriath insisted. “Better I assure myself that those left behind do not want too intently for us.” 

“Impossible, that we should not want so,” Elrond dismissed his reasoning, but kissed him ardently on the temple. “But heartened are we by your resolve, by your ambitions and your coming achievements. Have you given a thought to what you might name this new settlement? As architect and founder, it is your privilege.” 

“I have come upon a notion,” Echoriath admitted. “To be revealed at our return. I would see the site before I conclude myself.” 

“Well considered,” Elrond praised his thoughtfulness, as they meandered towards the rose bushes. 

The pair fell silent awhile, both enraptured by the velvet night, by the song of the nightingale in the trees about them and the rustle of wind through the nearby willow. The effulgent cast of the yellow moon was mirrored in Echoriath’s glowing eyes, the fullness of which gave the longtime loremaster momentary pause. The serenity of countenance that suddenly came over his grandson told of he whom he reflected upon, as well as the ardor of the emotion roused within him. His eyes were soon luminous as faraway torchlight, as his spirit stretched through the ether to seek out the beacon of his lover’s flame. Rare indeed was the sight of two elves so newly sworn with such a consummate connection, the well-honed capabilities that couples longtime bound but of humbler bloodlines yet fought to realize between themselves. 

The event both frightened and awed him, enough of both to prompt his response. 

“Does he heed you, when you thusly beckon through the otherworld?” Elrond inquired, with far more confidence than he felt. “Does he answer?” 

“He cannot,” Echoriath explained, mildly shocked that his wise grandsire did not understand this potential of his. “But he knows I call for him, and is heartened.” When he observed that Elrond waited on further knowledge, he continued. “At first, I could not control the urgency of the feeling, and he would come at once, fearing I’d come to harm. But as our relations deepened in intimacy, he has come to read my moods and knows when he is truly wanted for.” 

“How long have you been able to summon him?” Elrond asked, in his healer’s tone, which put Echoriath on his guard. 

“Since we first declared our love,” his grandson replied, with an innocence that worried him. “Is that not usual, grandsire?” 

The young elf had never loved before and was apparently ignorant of some of the norms, not to mention that his fathers had neglected to inform him of his potent Maiar blood. Elrond made a note to speak with Elladan this very night, but before, he must veil a loremaster’s cautions in a grandfather’s intent, which was not to spook his timid one into staying from adventure to explore what little they understood of his heritage.

“Tell me, dear one, would you confide an intimacy to one so doting as I?” Elrond queried, with some charm. 

“Surely,” Echoriath earnestly replied, though his eyes had ceased their otherworldly shine. 

“When you lie with your beloved,” Elrond essayed cautiously. “Does your fea linger awhile, after your passions are ended? Does your flame long to burn as one with that of your cousin?” 

“*Desperately*,” Echoriath answered him, though understood what it was he confessed. “In truth, this need of mine has been a concern for some time, which I could voice to no one but Tathren. We are both… conscious of the lure of the other’s flame. We have heard the tales… The feeling is strong in him, but there are times when I feel it might consume me. I have even… I have stopped our relations, once or twice, to corral myself.”

Elrond sighed, then objected: “Pen-neth, why did you not come to me? There exists a humble incantation that, if regularly conjured, can keep a promised couple from consummating their intent to bind before their time.” 

“There is?!” Echoriath bleated, then seemed to chastise himself for his ignorance. “Forgive me, grandsire. I have yet so much to learn of loving…” 

“The link between you is already rather intense,” Elrond commented. “I would recommend the pledge be uttered with double the regular frequency. But fear not, my brave one, every elf new to love is occasionally daunted by its whirlwind demands. Even some who are not so new experience trouble now and again.” 

Echoriath beamed a breathtaking smile at him, then sunk anew into his arms. 

“I fear it is not your sage counsel that I will miss most of all, grandsire,” the darkling elf intoned with ardent affection. “But these quiet times of honesty between us.” 

The Lord of Telperion shut his eyes, and clung tight to his little miracle elf.

* * * 

Beyond the torchlight of the encampment fields, an undulating brume ghosted through the forest hollows. Spectral clouds, like a thin spill of cream between the trees, clotted out all but the black, burley mallorn trunks, the milk-fed moon above. Legolas swerved through the murky wood as if on instinct alone, his violet cloak flapping about him like a raven’s wings. The frosty mist stung his cheeks as might the scowering of steel wool, though he dared not employ the cover of his hood, lest he loose his already meager hold on his bearings. The sodden ground squished and shifted beneath his galloping boots, the springtime mulch of melted snow, damp leaves, and emergent moss a treacherous path for any late evening traveler, but doubly for one so burdened by precious cargo. 

While dredging up the bog mud from a nearby marsh that afternoon, the frog-nourished sand an excellent balm for severe burns, he had discovered a patch of barely bloomed amarinths, sister to the golden yasbrinth, late of Glorfindel’s mantle. The flower trove was ample enough for him to thieve away three entire roots, each with four stalks, which he transported in a sack along with several generous shovels of the moist soil that bedded them. The elegance of the petal shape, the lissome stem, and the regal indigo shade reminded him of the hush nobility of his elf-knight; once suitably potted, he would gift his husband this distinguished plant, a favorite of his from the gardens of Imladris. For the extra root, however, he had less eloquent designs. 

The drooping boughs of his willow thicket were lithe as wraiths. They swayed amidst the vaporous fume, blown by forces unseen, unfelt by the archer as he billowed up the path of his own, somnambulant gardens. The oval eye of his kitchen window glowered hot in the distance, blinking in time with the flames of the hearth fired within. As he ‘scaped through a side door, the pungent smell of lye pricked his fog-blotted senses; Anorwen, their honorable housemaid, was boiling a batch of undergarments in the belly of a copper cauldron. 

Without bothering to properly untie his cloak - which he plunked over a hook, hung by its mithril clasp - Legolas stole over to a wayside alcove, where a worktable for their gardener was housed. He had earlier tasked Echoriath with the retrieval of several supplies, his bond-son-to-be had not failed him. A round pot patterned with a mosaic of translucent blue pebbles, in tones from cobalt to sapphire, was rolled in an oilskin to seal off the fertile earth already filled within. A basket full of tools, vials, and sprays was hid on the bottom shelf of the larder. Spying Elrohir at his desk through the dew shroud pane of the tiny window, which looked across the rose beds and into to his husband’s study, Legolas set about replanting and replenishing the drowsy flowers. Echoriath had been kind enough to enclose a scroll of instructions for the pummeling of the third bushel; once the first two bunches were potted with careful presentation, the archer was ready to turn alchemist for a time. 

As he laid out the pouches of athelas, pollen, aloe, and other unguent herbs, he could not keep himself from snatching glances at his comely mate, now tucked up in his basket chair by the humble brick hearth, scribbling intently in his diary. Even from such a distance, Legolas could perceive the sadness he yet held at bay, until their son had truly departed and the tempest brewing within him would be fully unleashed. True to his word, Tathren had spent longly hours each day with his doting Ada-Hir over the past three weeks, but the tally of those days would be done on the morrow and neither could further allay his sorrow at the too-incumbent parting. 

Father and son had grown so complicit in their brief confessional time, such that Tathren’s impending absence would thoroughly devastate them both; thus, Elrohir had hatched a winning plan to continue their closeness even away. Each would compose a journal to the other, of thoughts, incidents, and ruses, which would be traded upon the company’s return. Though the agreement had been to commence after leave-taking, Elrohir had not waited through the night of its conception, his heart too full of the troths he could not dare utter - less their son be dissuaded by the ardor of his emotion - to further withhold his quill from parchment. This evening’s fireside conversation had been their last in privacy, Legolas had no doubt his husband would be occupied by his venting of the resulting gush of feeling for some time yet. 

He had known better than to leave himself unoccupied during this strenuous time for their family. 

As he measured out the ingredients as instructed and tipped them into a bowl of unctuous oil, Legolas could not help but look forward to the time after their grief, when the shock of temporary loss would metamorphose into the relentless appreciation for the mate left with; a brutally physical appreciation, he predicted. When at last his unruly stomach had been appeased of its rancor and his lusting fever smote by proxy, Elrohir had begged a reprieve from their coupling. Legolas, ever gallant, had understood, even encouraged such an action. The chore of constant release or numb impotence demanded by the ruthless fever had taxed his husband beyond his limits of endurance, only for his body to be wrecked to emaciation by his subsequent illness. Their struggles had only strengthened their bond as mates, but Elrohir’s taste for the love-act needed to be rejuvenated, the taint of sickness, rote, and their son’s disloyalty blighted through a period of abstinence. 

This vital respite had had the effect of enhancing their chaste affections. Elrohir would constantly seek out the sanctuary of his limber frame; lazing in his arms for an entire afternoon, showering him in a unremitting spate of kisses and touches even when in less-than-polite company, harkening to him after even the briefest of moments apart. Whence he had been judged sufficiently restored by a bedeviled Erestor, they had resumed their nightly strolls, a vital source of contentment for them both. Their meandering discussions through the forest haunts would end not in lasciviousness, but in languor; each husband cradling the other for a time until slumber fell upon them. As soon as they slipped into the other’s arms, their soul flames would meld; the resulting effulgence sustaining them, until dawn and duty beckoned them apart. 

Indeed, Legolas came to cherish this time of sweeter love as essential, necessary to both survive their son’s coming absence and the eternity of their blissful union. 

The promise of the reunion of flush, hungry bodies, however, loomed large in his daydreams, for he would not insult his husband by dreaming so at night. Perhaps to stave off his own form of melancholy, Elrohir had lately been temptation personified to him, in his smolder-witted estimation. Legolas had devoted most of his free time to plotting future seductions, though these he would only deploy after Elrohir felt readied in giving himself. He respected his husband and his sorrows too much to hasten him. He could, however, demonstrate the ever-flowing rush of his devotion through simple offerings, such as this lovely plant, while preparing for later bed-play by crushing an extra bushel of the blooms into an amarinth-scented salve. 

Wicked and cunning, true, but also oddly comforting to the lust-deprived mind of a Mirkwood elf who longed to take possession of his heart’s mate.

Another quick glance told him Elrohir would soon finish his impassioned missive, so Legolas dumped the last of the amarinth powder he’d ground into the bowl of salve, then blended the mixture with the conviction of a seasoned chef. After batting off the last of the glutinous ooze from the spoon, he secured a lid on the bowl, then shelved it in the far back of their ice box. By the time he’d cleared the table of evidence and squired the plant into their common room, Elrohir, eyes warily overcast, was emerging from his study’s shadow. 

Though his every nerve was spiked in anticipation, Legolas was casually reclined on their divan, perusing an abandoned volume of love sonnets, when his quiescent beloved drifted in. 

“Amarinths, and so soon,” the elf-knight remarked, though without visible cheer. “How came you upon them?” 

“A marsh, by the camp,” Legolas expounded, barely veiling his anticipation. “I saw their indigo blooms through the long grass and thought of you.” 

Elrohir’s smile was bittered some and would not meet his downcast eyes. 

“Beautiful,” he whispered, curling into an armchair leagues from the divan. “You are… you are such a one, my husband…” His brimming mithril eyes locked on the flower, but would not stretch further to his golden mate. “Even in such a bleak time for us, you think but to hearten me. I fear I am no match for your immaculate care, my Legolas.” 

At the sounding of that last endearment, Legolas pricked up his ears. There was some newly, though obscure, matter afoot, looming about the chandeliers as if the brume without fogged around them. Only hours before, Elrohir had hung about him like a cat on a sunbaked porch; his bonded had been so amorous before his meeting with their son that the archer had thought they might very well couple that night. Yet if Tathren’s departure had been the catalyst to this despairing mood, Legolas doubted it was the outright cause. If so, why the vacuity, why the listless affectation of gratitude? Some greater mischief had beleaguered his husband, of this he was slowly growing certain, and no force of goodness or gall would keep him from its discovery. 

With the stealth of a veteran hunter, he folded the book together and seized up his morose mate. Resignation ruled him, at present, tinged by a hopelessness he battled to offset. When Legolas shifted into a more welcoming position, those argent eyes slunk over him, tempted by the promise of his beloved’s arms. Their gazes met, but Elrohir’s pained visage only withered further; the darkling elf opened his mouth to voice his thoughts, but none would come.

“Melethron,” Legolas beckoned to him. “Do not stinge yourself as the bearer of ill news. Come hither, and be confessed of it.” 

“I cannot,” Elrohir balefully shook his head. “For the matter of my conversation will surely burn you such that… that I will not be welcome within your embrace for some time to come.”

“Nonsense,” Legolas scolded him softly. “Tell me soonest of this trouble, and know my heat again.” 

“You would not be so giving, if you knew of my… my resolution,” Elrohir mused. “I fear my news will gut you, my dearest one, and I would not, if I could spare it, inflict such hurt upon you.”

“Then come be fortified by my kiss before you ruin me, my beauty,” he ventured, with a touch of humor. 

“*Legolas*,” Elrohir groaned, curling further into his chair. 

“Melethron-nin,” Legolas cooed, luring him with a prideful smile. “My star-rider.” 

To the golden elf’s ever-heightening unease, his Elrohir actually blushed. 

“Do not dissuade me with love troths, Legolas,” the elf-knight intoned, with self-imposed severity. “Not this night of nights.” 

“Very well,” he sighed in turn, waiting on this fractious news. “I find far too many ‘*Legolas’*’ in that upbraiding tone of yours, meleth. Say your peace, and be done with it.” 

With permission granted in such distemper, Elrohir found himself reluctant to commence their sundering. The voicing of his decision could not wait, however, and so he selected his opening words, indeed his every word, with greatest care. 

“My recent illness has, by now, been entirely overcome,” he hushly began. “The lust-fever has also been conquered.” 

“For the best,” Legolas commented, to encourage him. “I would not haste to see the scourge return.” 

“Truly?!” Elrohir asked him, taken aback by his opinion.

“Forgive my boldness,” Legolas prepared him. “But I liked not that our indulgence had become a necessity. I would not have my bonded lie with me for relief alone, nor did I like to take you until exhaustion overwhelmed my senses and I fell dead asleep, for nights upon end. The occasional night of fervent coupling is always pleasurable, for certes, but mindless coupling is for naught. The only thought that kept me counseled was that you suffered far more than I. I came to long for a look of true desire between us. Love was never absent in our togetherness, but lust, as you have so skillfully instructed me through our long years, must be meticulously kindled, before we two, as one, might be engulfed by its flames. Mark me, Elrohir, I gladly gave of myself and would do so again. But I like our ease in loving, I like to tempt you, to be seduced in return. I felt the fever an intrusion, not a boon to our togetherness. I daresay you felt so, as well.”

“I did,” the elf-knight admitted thoughtfully. His shoulders laxed some, when he saw how easily his first hurdle was jumped clear. The second, however, was double the size. “Indeed, I sense, though I know not how, that the fever will never return.” 

“Valar be praised,” Legolas heralded emphatically, then waited on him with doting eyes. He wanted his husband something earnest, after that admission, to soothe away the strictures of reason and bathe him, worshipfully, in his love. Perhaps he should voice this desire, before the feeling is betrayed? 

Too late, for Elrohir spoke again.

“In light of my recent struggles with our pen-tathar,” his husband stated softly, desolation undercutting every syllable breathed forth. “In the wake of that razing fever, bereth-nin, I… after much reflection, I have come to… to a reversal of our fortune. I no longer… that is, I feel I cannot… I cannot sire…” Before he could speak the last, Legolas was at his feet, kneeling as only a tenderheart could in such a grave circumstance. “You must forgive me, Legolas. You *must*!!” 

“Hush, melethron,” he crooned as if a lullaby, pulling Elrohir off his seat and into his arms before the elf-knight could think to object. “I know. I know and… I understand.” 

“Forgive me,” the darkling elf bleat anew, but did not stop himself from burrowing into his husband’s tight embrace. 

“How can you be ought but faultless in my eyes, lirimaer, after such agony?” Legolas insisted. “We have eternity, meleth, for revisions and reconsiderations. Of most vital importance, we are reconciled with our child. I cannot wish for more, lest the Valar curse me for my arrogance.” Gentle lips found his bonded’s ear, into which he further vowed: “I cannot wish for more than your peerless love, my only one.” 

The kiss that then mated to his mouth was far from chaste, far from rote, but flared with the promise of a mate seduced by his beloved’s ever-valiant heart.

The bliss of their most worshipful loving could not verily wait upon sorrow’s renewing aftermath. 

* * * 

Elbereth had fashioned such a beauteous day for their departure, none in the vale could doubt the Valar’s will in regards to the valor of the expedition. Indeed, none among the gathered well-wishers could loom amid their own storm clouds too long, when such a luminous cast dappled the glade grass, the trees about billowed in blithe harmony, even the sprightly river gushed wildly, in lieu of tears. The pack-laden steeds were lined officiously, brushed down and petted only moments before by their eager riders, who lately lingered among their anxious familiars, eyes darting away every so often to flatter the luring horizon. 

With a snort from Thorontir, or perhaps merely the most wily of the horses, the adventurers were made too strikingly aware of the imminence of their leave-taking.

Arms yet linked with those of his Adar, Echoriath fidgeted rather becomingly, too energized to be affected by the moment of the occasion. His overabundance of excitement had infected his elders, who, far from being worried, were already thinking towards his return, bursting with tales and seasoned by his experiences. Glorfindel hugged to him a good long while, singing him heralds and imparting a lifelong warrior’s wisdom, not shying from a tender peck to end his sermon. 

Fuelled by his praise, Echoriath veritably leapt into Elladan’s waiting arms, though his darkling father had nothing but bale-faced emotion to impart. He clung to his yet slender son for lesser time, but with greater intent, drinking in the last remnants of his sweetness. Echoriath, however, was wise to his regrets. 

“Fear not, Ada,” he swore to him. “The journey will not bitter me. In my heart, will forever be your timid little one.” 

“Aye, that you will,” Elladan himself vowed, then released him before he could not. “Be safe, nin pen-ind. May our love keep you always.” 

Before the young builder could recover himself, Cuthalion pounced on him. He thought his brother might break his arms, such was the crush of his embrace, but yet he gave back his equal in force and affection. The silver elf was concomitantly abashed and elated for him, quaking as he was with inexpressible feeling. He fumbled awhile in his pockets, then pulled out a telling leather sachet. Before he could proffer it, Echoriath took up his hands. 

“Talion, there is none in Aman that could take the place of such a brother,” he insisted, though he nonetheless allowed the sachet to be pressed into his palm.

“That is why I gift you but a sliver of myself, to keep you,” Cuthalion explained, as his blushing twin loosed the strings. 

He extricated a bracelet of leather twine, a lock of his silver hair braided in the weave. Cuthalion tugged back his sleeve cuff, revealing its twin, woven with an ebony wisp instead. At Echoriath’s bleat of delight, of desolation, the horn sounded behind. 

“Quickly, you must fasten it,” he urged, as his brother instinctively grabbed his wrist. As soon as this was accomplished to his satisfaction, he sprung on his silver twin anew. “I will cherish it always. None but you shall sever it, gwanur-nin, though may a time never come when I cannot find my home in your heart.”

“Be brave, Echo-nin,” Talion wished him, struggling now to maintain composure and put on a beaming smile for his twin. “Each day, I will want for you, but then I will recall that you are joyful in your charge and pray for the Valar to bless you with inspiration.” 

“As I will pray that you find your bliss, nin bellas,” Echoriath whispered to him. “Though we are not of the same seed, Talion, we are forever twinned in regard.”

“We are,” Cuthalion nodded, then kissed him on the brow. “Now go, gwanur, and ride for destiny.” 

As Echoriath skipped off towards his tawny steed, his beloved could not bring himself to break from the circle his steadily, though quietly, weeping fathers held around him. 

“The years will pass in a blink,” he reassured them. “I swear it, Ada-Las, Ada-Hir. You will not have time enough to want for me, ere I will be returned.” 

“We will want but for your safekeeping,” Legolas murmured. “For your fulfillment in the quest, for the awesome beauty of the valley, for the mischievous companionship of your swordbrothers, and for the maturation of your love for your betrothed. We will want for the envisioning of a haven for all the peoples of elfkind. We will want for your peace of mind, and the least daunting hardships along the way. Though you, no doubt, will want for a greater challenge than that.” 

“Perhaps,” Tathren smirked, his eyes pure mercury for a glinting second. “I would not waste myself in perils, Ada. I would enjoy my company, my journey’s path, my beloved one. Though I will want for your wisdom, Adar-nin, not to mention an archer who bests me with stunning regularity. Mayhap you should want for my humility...” When the horn sounded for a second time, Tathren knew he had tried Thorontir’s patience long enough. Legolas took solid hold of him, letting the link between them flare for a brief instant. “I will sing to you, Ada, through the ether, so you may know of me.” 

“I will listen for you, nin ind,” Legolas promised him. “I could never forget my little lark’s call.” 

The instant he wrenched himself from his sire’s arms, he plunged into Elrohir’s. The elf-knight was surprisingly serene, though his cheeks were yet streaked with tears. 

“This very night, you must write in your journal, Ada,” Tathren pressed him. “I will, as well. You must tell me all of what you experienced today, all of what is in your heart. I would know you. I would know everything of you.” 

“You need know only this, my brave, beautiful one,” Elrohir rasped, not even trusting his voice to carry the message through. “I am so very proud of the elf you would make of yourself, of the courage you demonstrate so effortlessly. May the lessons of the road before you teach of fortitude, caring, and conviction, though you already possess each of these weighty blessings. You have my love, pen-tathar, and will forever be the child of my heart.” 

“Gerich veleth nin, Ada,” Tathren proclaimed, then thieved a last, desperate hug. 

With a whistle from Echoriath, already mounted his steed, he bowed before his hallowed fathers, then sped off to join his company. 

As the riders reared their horses, before galloping off to chase the dawn, the gathering of loved ones and well wishers broke into the traditional questing choral, which sung of hardiness, of gallantry, of honor, heritage, and the wide expanses of their forever land. 

 

End of Part Eleven 

 

Gerich veleth nin - You have my love


	12. Part 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Life in the new settlement.

Part Twelve

Eight Years Later

A gull’s cry woke him, as oftentimes and as aught, but a blink before the break of dawn over the eastward peaks of the echoriath. As dusk swept over the kingdoms of Arda across the saltwater drift of the ocean, Arien’s gossamer rays wafted over the opalescent sands of the nearby shore and haloed the ash-blue crags around their hush valley. When the first peachy embers plumed in the high arc of his elliptical window, he would rise. Soon, the billows of mist would cascade like a pride of galloping, snow-white maerhas down the mountainside, the spire’s honey-orange crown would glow as the fabled aurora of the glacial northlands. None in the vale would willingly forgo this sight, least of all their founding architect, who had deliberately angled the balcony of his residence just so he might bestow regular worship. From his familiar perch on the brush-end of the strong bough that berthed their talan, he would greet his last morning on the blustery ederwood that had borne them for seven cycles of season, in the valley that had found the elf in him. 

Along the river and into the westward fields were the raw beginnings of his vision; a colony of tradesmen, merchants, and artists, a community of cultural flourish kept by the battlement of mountains that surrounded the lush vale. In these titans of rich ore, in the bamboo thickets between, in the southward cotton fields, and in the fertile delta that spit the river into open sea were all the necessary resources to ply, barter, create, and dream. Elbereth’s only significant oversight in fashioning such a singular landscape was for the mighty timbre of the mallorn, the essential element to any elven construct, which they regularly imported from Telperion. Their cavern stores were now as plentiful as a forest itself might be; their homeland waited on the return of their fleet, their holds brimming with earned, exotic stock of vegetable, horticultural, and mineral nature. 

The architect himself would be aboard, along with his adventuring company, none of whom had left their valley’s splendor since first traversing the treacherous north pass, eight years before. 

As a rosy tongue of light lapped the oval pane in the wall behind their cozy bunk, Echoriath veered his thoughts from the impatient dawn to the golden elf curled around him. Tathren had slept fitfully the night before, as excitement rutted with anxiety within the nervous confines of his frontier-hardy frame. Both wondered at what their families would make of them, bronzed and bettered as they were by hard-won experience; their characters matured in the seaside coves as the savory wines of Forochel Bay. With the lately transport of timber, their elders had been soothed by spare correspondence, but could a hurriedly composed scroll properly impart the battles, bruises, cares that had impacted them, the pummeling waves of bleak and bleary circumstance that had refined them into warrior-pearls? For they were warriors, of a pilgrim kind unknown since the Helcaraxe of ages long past. 

In their few remaining moments of quietude, before the balm of sunrise spread forth over the vale and the horn sounded from afar to rouse them, Echoriath recalled to himself the telltale events that had led to this somnambulant morning, to their bliss. 

The first year, caught in the wind-tunnel northern pass, had been a brute awakening. The scorching summertime trek had sapped them of all but will; the stark, treeless winter had nearly broken them, unnatural as it was for an elf to pass endless, snowbound months without even the most barren bough’s consolation. The weather was so unfavorable that his surveying task was prolonged into another heatwave, which led his company to bickering, then to scrapping, then to outright snapping. Only Thorontir’s blunt example had kept some from abandoning their camp, only Tathren’s hawk-eyed vigilance had kept him from loosing all sense. By the following midsummer, they emerged withered and forlorn from the cruel pass into a valley of such splendor, they lurched onto the first patch of wild grass and veritably wept out their hearts. None, however, could linger on apologies, when there were fields to race through, vineyards to plunder, rivers to drench them giddy. 

His groin tingled at the memory of that first, heady night, when Tathren stole him away from the others awhile. Bedded between two savage vine rows, another sprig of grapes bursting beneath him with every impassioned thrust, he’d been gleefully ravaged, then afterwards fed the mashed fruits of his thrashing. He could not count the tally of how many similarly saucy ruses they’d played upon each other through the years, each one shaded by the effort their party was presently undertaking. The feasting night – on every possible kind of flesh – when they’d finally erected their tent compound and had some genuine privacy. A fierce riding in the rapids, when the designs had been completed and the company had tossed him in, to celebrate. A tussle in the white sands of the newly discovered shoreline, a breaching concomitant with their breaking ground, the furtive gropes they’d barely thieved time for when reinforcements arrived in the form of an army of ready, ruddy builders, who knew naught of their relationship and therefore might question Echoriath’s authority, were he to be perceived as overly besotted by his cousin. The night they’d been outed by an ill-timed embrace in a mine shaft, only to later be chastised for their needless concealment. 

Beyond their physical escapades, which had only further embroiled them in passion, their evolution had been effected by a host of trials and triumphs. The hallowed valley had not immediately succumbed to their elven charms. The mining of ore proved treacherous, in early days. The swift depletion of game had lead to quarrels over animal husbandry. Though the pass to the sea was but a gentle slope compared with the northern route, imperceptible bogs of quicksand lurked about. The lack of suitable wood had made that first ship an unsteady marvel; for months those that stayed feared for the drowning of their swordbrothers, hardly seafarers of any breadth of repute. Their decision to see the skeleton of a colony that existed after five years of toil into a flourishing compound had caused them entire seasons of weight, woes, and endless debate, but finally the green attitudes of the administrators the High Council sent along had resolved them to the extension of their adventure. 

That, and the sense of overwhelming satisfaction Echoriath derived from merely strolling through the burgeoning riverside town; the halls, boroughs, farms, and endless fields of his dreams come to pulsating, breathtaking life. Each week, another party of immigrants were plunked onto the docks by the trade ships, ruddy-cheeked and ripe for the adventure of establishing a new colony: artisans from Valimar, miners from Taniquetil, craftworkers from Telperion, Lindon, and the isle of Otriton. His apprentice, Celevast, was by now prepared to replace him, a respectable council was in place, and his initial company grew restless anew. Despite his reluctance to leave a task unfinished, Echoriath had recognized that the premier adventure of his elfhood had come to a reasonable completion, and so had not countered his beloved, when once more he had been prompted with the need for their return. 

His duties often encompassed him in such a cloying thrall, that he at times even forgot the worried fathers that awaited them. 

The feathery light of dawn was by now a plumage of ambers across the clear window glass. Tathren had been tantalized into consciousness by pillow lips, far more plump and alluring than that which cradled his head. His reverent eyes sought out the twilight beauty of the face he loved so well, sadness and sweetness mingled in their aqua shine. 

After almost a decade of togetherness, Echoriath could not imagine by what force or foe their bond might be severed; so officious were they in intent, that they had begun to wear their rings on the opposing hand to signify their betrothal. His love for Tathren had so thoroughly consumed his heart that its meat fed every other emotion, ever deepening their attachment, ever replenishing his spirit; their soulful affection was the constant that unified the disparate threads of their vagabond existence and wove him into a whole. 

Echoriath would not be without his love, not for an instant. 

“Dawn breaks,” Tathren rasped, fighting to unfurl them from their blankets. “Come, Echo, or we will miss it.” 

“We must bid farewell to the bed,” the darkling elf groaned, suddenly reluctant to greet the day, and the long, abstinent weeks of their ocean journey, without some indulgence. “It will miss us more than the dawn, who is too haughty, too aloof. The bed is our familiar. He will understand.”

“She is warming, and beauteous,” Tathren reminded him of the dawn, though he had not yet moved to untwine their lazy limbs. In truth, he would be more than content to graze the plains of his beloved’s milky skin until mid-morn, but he knew Echoriath would later regret any such languor. “And intolerant of tardiness, besides.” 

“If we switch ends, we may yet bask in her glorious renewal of our vale,” he noted, wicked-eyed. “While paying fair tribute to the neglected bed.” He laved the cleft of his throat to further entice him and shifted to demonstrate the compromising perspective, thus proffering his engorged member before the golden elf’s very nose, as if to emphasize his point. 

“I fear few would characterize our bed as suffering from neglect,” Tathren smirked, seizing up the rather emphatic objection before him. “Though, on morns when I have been the lone occupant, the sheets have expressed some envy of the vineyards.” 

“Rascals,” Echo chuckled, his amber eyes aglow with the beatific light of the dawn. 

Sprightly, bedeviling fingers tickled over the golden elf’s taut thigh, then teased over his quick-sprouting erection. Compromise appeared inevitable, especially when those conniving fingers left off to worry his navel to distraction, refusing to palm him until their demands were met. The peredhil, however, had a few tricks of his own. He lavished his most thorough attentions on Echoriath’s feet, treating each toe as he would the spuming head of his shaft, until his lover writhed with need before him. 

Echoriath was too smart to long suffer such delightful abuse. Taking one last glimpse at the by now entirely risen sun, he yanked the astonished elf up towards him by his flailing, fighting legs, then sucked back the entirety of his turgid member. Without much decorum but hotly committed to his devouring, his molten mouth set an unforgiving pace, such that Tathren was soon slicked and dripping. Not to be outdone, he played his pulpy tongue over the hard-swell of Echo’s own tumescence, with the blistering skill of one who could sculpt its every wrinkle and pucker, its every serpentine vein. Their concomitant completion was ferocious, abolishing, each lover’s climactic moan drenched by the other’s ecstatic eruption. 

“I fear the sheets gained no satisfaction from that exercise,” Echoriath purred, as Tathren spooned him from behind. “They are as pristine.” 

“The day is young,” the golden elf murmured against his sweaty neck. “We’ve time enough to suitably soil them. For pity’s sake, if naught else.” 

“You pity the sheets?” Echoriath could not help but trill with laughter, as his face grew even more luminous with afterglow. 

“Aye, for you will not be here to warm them,” Tathren obliged him mirthfully. “I know not how I would weather such an anguished time, so I give them the full credit of my compassion.” 

Echoriath digested this rather pregnant jest, then whispered: “But you, melethron, need not fear to ever require such compassion from the sheets, nor the pillows, nor even the coverlet. You are my inspiration, my fuel, the only inhabitant of my dreamscape colonies. I cannot envision a tower without placing you atop it, a bridge that you would not cross, a hall that does not have you seated by its hearth, awaiting me. I would spin draperies from you flaxen hair, carpets from your silken skin, varnish the floor of a banquet hall the color of your eyes. You are my one, tathrelasse, my only one. No future task will take me from you, I swear upon the very colony we have founded together.” He twisted in his lover’s arms and took his mouth after a sigh, fusing both his heart and his vow to those sultry lips. 

“Speak further troths, lirimaer” Tathren urged him, stroking eager hands over his undulating chest. An enlivened erection was pressed between Echoriath’s tight buttocks, even more insistent than earlier. “You enflame me.” 

“But are you heartened, meleth?” the darkling elf moaned despite himself, his nipples being mercilessly pinched. 

Despite the now ravenous need that fired him, Tathren murmured poignantly: “I am yours, Echo-nin, astride, abroad, or away. No distance could be far enough to quit you from my heart, no country vast enough to keep me from coming to you. If fate chooses to separate us for a time, you need not fear my fading. I will forever be full of you, overflowing with such a rush of love that you will be swept up, near or far, by its tide.” 

With that, Tathren stabbed into him, as the foretold waves of peerless emotion crashed around him, swirled fervently about, and dragged him under, just as the horn sounded in the distance. 

* * * 

Three weeks later, another roseate dawn washed the refined coral path to his family home in its reverent tones, as if to edify the idyllic landscape of their willow-veiled glade. The spectral mist hung low amidst the lavender patches, which took on a phosphorescence not quite blue, not quite violet. The stained-glass domes and hand-crafted archways of the somnambulant talan gave the gothic structure a magical air, or so Tathren had always believed. 

His life there, with his two kindhearted fathers, had been almost preternaturally spirited; not a day had passed, until that fateful night eight years gone, that he had not felt utterly at peace there. That he should now return, a seasoned adventurer and a constant betrothed, only amplified the quiet splendor of this elegant sunrise. Though his journeying had had its share of scrapes and celebrations, he had come to feel that he had needlessly wronged his parents in departing so swiftly. That he had stayed those added years had possibly soured them, though he had to trust in their hard-won hearts, in their ever-understanding example. He suddenly longed to creep into their hush bedchamber and covet their sleep-headed attentions, as when he was small; their affections peerless, their regard uninhibited by remembrance, by regret. While he did not likewise regret the manner of his leave-taking – for he would not forgo Echoriath’s love for a thousand mines of dwarven mithril – as the coral dust scattered in his wake, he wished for a glorious reunion that was perhaps not to be. 

He vowed, then, to do everything in his power to entirely heal their bruised relationship and to have again their blithe regard. 

There was but one price he would not pay them. 

Echoriath himself lingered at his side, reluctant, as ever, to part from his beloved. Caught between the pull of his own benevolent family and the need to support his future mate, he would not dare release Tathren’s trembling hand until the peredhil was thoroughly resolved. Crunching the coral beneath his ragged boots, the builder could not help but note, despite the golden hour, how the talan would soon require some well-planned refurbishment. 

The house was kept well enough - though houses of such craftsmanship were slow to age and Elrohir did have an eye for such things - but the garden was a veritable wreck. The fine grain of the path had spilled over the edges and yellowed the grass, which did not even account for the other, strangely sparse patches. The flower beds were randomly seeded, as if a blind elf had done the handiwork; the tree trunks scored raw in places. The only possible answer to such neglect was that his uncles had acquired a new, untamed pet, but Echoriath thought this, as well, uncharacteristic of them. 

Tathren, however, only had eyes for the terrace to their bedchamber above, beyond which the curtains were drawn. 

“Perhaps you should not wake them,” Echoriath suggested. “Come home with me awhile. Have some glad-tidings and let them sleep. Cuthalion will, no doubt, have a week’s worth of tales to regale us with, and my Adar will feast us. Then may we return, hearty and hale, to…” 

“To further condemnation?” Tathren mused, his anxiety palpable. “I would rather take my whipping worn and be later cheered by my uncles.” 

“How could your fathers fail to welcome you home?” Echoriath attempted to reassure him. “You are their only son, eight years away.” 

“Aye, I am their son,” Tathren dismissed his reassurance with a sigh. “I have become your betrothed, your mate and future husband.” He snatched a last, lonely kiss from the darkling’s elf’s lips, but was clearly decided. “I *am* your lover.” 

With a gentle nod, Echoriath released his hand and began to amble away. “Have faith, meleth. You are not newly forsaken. Merely… worrisome, at times.” 

“So you have oft repeated, these last years away,” Tathren taunted him, with a wink. 

“And you, my stubborn elf, have yet to mark my wisdom, in this,” Echoriath countered, with a wry smile. “Be well, melethron.” 

As Echoriath wandered back into the forest deep, Tathren trod up the last of the walk, his vow of temperance re-sworn with every following step. The entrance was, to his astonishment, unlocked and unguarded. Stealing surreptitiously through the halls, his focus was such that he failed to note the varnish stripes on the low walls, the removal of all decorative weapons, and the rampant untidiness of the common room. Indeed, until he loomed in the open archway to his Adar’s bedchamber, he had heard nothing but the cacophony of his cyclonic thoughts and felt nothing but his batter-ram heart. 

Then, of a sudden, they were there before him; legs, arms, and lengths of hair entwined as the cinch of a sailor’s knot, Elrohir’s placid face buried in the slope of Legolas’ neck, Legolas’ nose dug into thatches of ebony hair. His fathers, as ever, slept as if in the womb, embracing, embroiled, and relentless. Tathren clamped a hand over his mouth so as not to cry out, so needful was he of their affection. He retreated a spell, mindful of waking them, but slunk back into position at a strange trill. 

In the grip of emotion, he had thought the bellies of sheets at their sides to be… well just that. As, however, one of the bunches jiggled mirthfully and from another sounded a peal of giggles, he drew further into the quiescent chamber. From behind Legolas’ broad back, a groggy elfling grappled over the two slumbering elves, then rolled over Elrohir, onto the open bed. One of the bellies there squeaked in protest, as an ellon of exacting similarity popped out, scowling cutely at his wild-haired attacker. Seeing that this one was bunk-less, he squirmed over to accommodate his twin. The first swiftly burrowed in beside him; they were as two raven-silked pods on a white cornstalk. Tathren, agape with shock, reeled further at the emergence of a third elfling, again from the far side, who Legolas promptly scooped up by the scruff of the neck and dumped between the other two. 

“Hush, pyn-neth,” he muttered, without bothering to open his eyes. “Ada-Hir is weary.” In unconscious agreement, Elrohir wedged his face between Legolas and the pillow, tightening their embrace. The archer, however, reached out to pet his closest son’s tousled crown. The three little ones were by now bright-eyed with the balmy morning. “If you are restless, ioneth, you may fetch a cup of water…” 

Though Legolas drifted off again, three glinting pairs of eyes were now fixed on the statue-still interloper in the doorway. They neither cowered nor charged the tattered elf-warrior, but rather gaped in bedazzlement at this odd creature, as the ‘creature’ in question was awed by the sight of them. Their age could not have been counted a day over four years - which would have left Tathren wondering if they were, indeed, all siblings - if they were not so obviously, impossibly identical. Their ebony hair was sheer as a star-lit night and their gemstone eyes black as onyx. Unlike the brethren’s opalline pallor, their skin was buttercream fresh. Their features were possessed by a wolfine comeliness, dusk-shroud, yet soft as cubs. 

Tathren was immediately caught in their rapture. 

The children, however, were not long impressed by his sudden appearance. 

“Ellon!” the boldest one accused him, with a tiny but abject finger. “Ellon *here*, Ada-Las!” 

“Aye, pen-neth,” Legolas mumbled, his groggy mind thinking itself party to a long-familiar game. “You are an ellon. What is Ciryon?” 

“*Ellon*, Ada-Las,” Ciryon himself replied, his lilting voice anxious and his manner clenched. “No pen-neth. Big like Cufalon!”

“One day, ion-nin,” the listless archer grumbled good-naturedly, having finally come to the realization that his little ones would not stand for their further rest. “But, thank Eru, not for some time yet.” 

He bent his face to Elrohir’s and kissed him into wakefulness, the two fathers stealing a moment of vital caresses. The children, seeing that their Adar would be of no use, decided to question the intruding elf themselves. The bravest one scampered forth to the edge of the bed, then peered resolutely up at him. At the sight of those obsidian eyes, the elfling obviously battling some raucous fear, Tathren came back to himself. He wisely lowered to his knees, then offered a patient hand. 

“Mae govannen, pen-gwanur,” he murmured to the little one, who reared at his endearment. After his initial greeting, he realized he had no idea what else to say. How does one begin to know the brother he never thought he had? 

With considerable trepidation, the child took the lissome, though calloused, hand in his own. He examined his long fingers as a medic might, then pointed to a nub on the knuckle of his index. 

“I am a bowsman, yes,” he acknowledged the unspoken question. “And do you know who taught me?” The little one shook his head. With a smirk, Tathren pointed to their golden-haired father. The elfling gasped aloud, then paused to consider this news. “What is your name, dear one?” 

“Rorif,” he told him, squeezing his hand. The young master turned with considerable poise and introduced his siblings. He pointed to one twin, then the other. “Ciron. Brifor.” 

“Valiant names, all,” Tathren remarked, with considerable reverence. Any flickering doubt, however, as to their twinness was soon smote by the raising of three smart fingers. 

“We three,” Rohrith declared, as a bleat sounded behind him. 

“Tathren!!” Elrohir cried, his voice shred by shock. Without a second thought, he pushed through the clinging covers, his argent eyes reflecting nothing but tenderness and woe. Before the adventuring elf could stand again, he was in his father’s arms. “Oh, my brave one, how we have wanted for you!” 

“As I for you, Ada,” he whispered, overcome by this heartfelt welcome. His father’s embrace loosened some, but only to accommodate Legolas, who’s aqua eyes, to Tathren’s never-ending astonishment, brimmed with tears. 

“You are emboldened by your adventuring to steal into our bedchambers so,” Legolas teased him, with implicit fondness. “How do you fare, our dearest one?” 

“I am… content. Gladly of my return. Hale…” he essayed, but could not keep his eyes from darting over to the bed. “In truth, I am astounded! I have brought gifts for you, Adar, but none will compare to… to these treasures you have begot…” 

“You approve, then?” Elrohir chuckled, but could not yet come to entirely release his golden son, nor could he steal his eyes away from sight of his stately visage, nor could he aught but admire his regal countenance. “I thought but to sire one brother to hearten you, but Elbereth had other designs upon our home.” 

“Elbereth, my horse’s nethers,” Legolas winked at his now blushing mate, reaching a warm touch across his son’s back. “It appears no Son of Earendil can sire aught but a bushel of babes.” 

“They are magnificent,” Tathren sighed, still reeling from the unforeseen events of this incredible homecoming. “Equal in wonder to the sight of you, Adar.” Overcome himself by emotion, by the simple feeling of standing between his fathers, locked in their arms, Tathren hugged them to him anew. 

“How did Echoriath weather the journey?” Elrohir inquired, not a whiff of scorn in his caring tone.   
”How did you, nin bellas?” 

“Come and be readied,” Tathren instantly beamed. “You shall see for yourselves what mettle my betrothed wears so becomingly.” Slackening their hold but loathe to release him, Legolas and Elrohir both chuckled at this eager beckoning. 

“This rather rambunctious company is not so swiftly readied, maltaren-nin,” Elrohir advised him with bemusement. “As you will soon discover.” He turned to his new brood of infants, who were in turns fascinated and befuddled by the display before them. 

Rohrith, as ever, was the first to speak. “This Tafren… *gwanur*?” 

“Ioneth!” Legolas chided playfully. “Have we not often spoke of Tathren your brother?” 

“Aye, Ada-Las,” Ciryon assented ponderously. 

“This is he before you, pyn-neth,” Elrohir underlined, as Tathren cautiously perched himself on the edge of the bed. The elflings stared some more, obsidian eyes veiled with rapt consideration of this blonde immaculate, but did not move. 

“*This* Tafren-brother?” Brithor chirped, his first utterance of the day. 

“Aye, nin ind,” Tathren smiled, stroking the back of his fingers across his plump cheek. “Though your very being comes as the most heartening of surprises, I can already declare with no little confidence that we will soon come to cherish one another.”

“Gwanur!” he suddenly shrieked. The three elflings pounced on him, until he was wrapped tight in a bundle of sibling joy.

Elrohir and Legolas looked on with unabashed pride, but exchanged a knowing, rueful glance. 

The day’s most astounding surprise had yet to even awake. 

* * *

No quill scratch nor scrape of charcoal was spared in the rendering, as evidenced by the book of exacting and magnificent drawings before them. If the settlement itself proved but a distant cousin to the grandeur of the valley town in these sketches, then the nameless vale amidst the echoriath was indeed a sight to behold. 

Beyond the fertile river banks stood stately guildhalls with domed ceilings of intricately cut glass, thatched-roof trade mills, a marketplace of multicolored tents around a wading pool, an endless row of oblong studios where artisans might craft their wares. A cylindrical alehouse, like the famed coliseum in the mountains overtop ancient Brithombar, a well located at the epicenter of the governmental gardens to assure each inhabitant read the daily debate record, a wharf as lively as any in Valimar; these were but a few of the constructions, awesome in their own handsome way, that graced the waterfront. Not to overlook the innovative structure of the mines, the resplendent orchards, the teardrop talans that did not overly tax the lithe trees of the one, relatively sparse forest. 

That each of these architectural wonders had sprung from the mind of his youngest son chastened Elladan, as each successive sheet of parchment was revealed to him. 

When, but an hour before, a fit, formidable elf had wandered into their garden unannounced, both he and Glorfindel had leapt up, immediately on their guard. The colony from Laurelin yet sheltered a rogue element of pride-jaundiced youths, who had set their adamant sights on Elrond and his extended family. Though the trouble had not yet amounted to much more than a few despoiled flower beds, neither warrior took kindly to intruders. Their sword-arms laxed at the sight of his Noldor dark hair, but the unfamiliar color of his formal tunic kept them standing. Until, of course, the elf’s regal features came into full view. After a jolting start, the two fathers could naught but gawk at the sage intensity of their long-away son. 

Without a shred of his former awkwardness, Echoriath had exhibited himself to their disbelieving eyes as a solider to his captain after a grueling battle, his sweat, scars, and grime as proudly displayed as his rock-digger’s chest, his axe-wielder’s arms, the calves of one who has conquered an entire circle of enclosing mountains. Yet that familiar blush of self-consciousness had soon apple-toasted his cheeks, when he had felt the impact of their reverent regard. 

“I am home, Adar,” Echoriath had announced himself, waking them anew to the reality of his presence. “Will you not embrace me?” 

They had, indeed, and with a fervor formerly unknown to their panoply of brighter emotions. They had barked a hasty word to summon Cuthalion, then had wrapped this reinvention of their timid Echoriath into a clutch of such intensity, such poignancy, that each had in turn broke off teary-eyed. Elladan had found he could not but for a moment’s bashfulness lure his incredulous stare away from this fierce, florid creature that had at last returned to them, nor could he loose his arm from around his supple waist. 

Upon this closer contact, there had been some evidence of his weariness. After the ardor of their reunion, the golden eyes had become burnished with faint fatigue, the steps he had followed up to their talan had been more leaden than sprightly. Elladan had discovered his child again while they awaited his silver brother, as Echoriath had not shied from lolling onto his father’s shoulder, curling his lazy hold all the tighter. The billows of wild laughter that had burst from him, when Cuthalion had tumbled his twin to the floor and had wrestled him gleefully, could have sounded from no other than his most precious one. 

Elladan had known him, then, for the one he had so dotingly reared, and had been hearted to find him anew. 

As his gaze glided from the sketches to their overly modest creator, the thoroughly impressed father could not help but note how even the settlement’s majesty paled in comparison to the elf of which its raising had made his son. Unlike his reactions from earlier years in this silent courtship of their approval, he graciously awaited their judgment, sipping his cordial and settled languidly in his chair. His amber eyes stealthily recorded the minutiae of their reactions, but did not fail to appreciate the subtle changes to their dwelling, nor the familiar sounds, smells, and tastes of old. The scrape of the wind against the shutters, the gurgling stream of moisture against the skylight glass, the savory taste of the homemade soup, and the crisp crunch of lembas slats all conspired to welcome him home. Such elegant behavior from his willowy son was so uncommon to Elladan, that he had, between admiring the buildings and their regal architect, almost overlooked the hollow disquiet that suddenly loomed about his mate. Theirs, however, was an elemental union, so the chill that had hushed his husband now skittered across his shoulders, making him too acutely aware of the golden elf’s distress. 

The Balrog-slayer hid his despondency with the implacable mettle of a warrior of two lifetimes. None but the shrewdest stare, the most intimate of hearts to his might guess at the mounting tension in his calmly folded limbs, the lump that stopped his throat. Were he compelled to speak, the action might unravel him, yet rare was the day Elladan would bet against his husband’s containment. No longer able to keep his tongue, Cuthalion besot his brother with a flurry of much deserved praise, which took the teeth out of Glorfindel’s eventual, subtle rising from the table and retreat over to the carafe of water on the far table. 

Not wishing to interrupt the lively twins in order to draw attention to his struggling mate, Elladan remained at table, but sought within to link through their cherished bond, to warm him through the ether, if not in the sanctuary of his arms. In truth, the peredhil had never seen his husband so viciously struck by a mere series of pictures – architectural drawings, verily - nor any emotion since their own tumultuous courtship, an age ago. 

When Glorfindel continued to remain aloft for nearly a quarter hour, Elladan found he could neither keep Echoriath’s hawkish eyes from darting over to his missing father, nor his own worries from overtaking him. Yet to his ongoing surprise, the youngling was the first to rise in the Balrog-slayer’s wake, patting his brother on the shoulder as he passed to shush him. 

“Ada,” he murmured, but inches away. “Have I brutally troubled you?” He placed a tentative hand at the apex of his father’s back, locked them in an intimate circle. “I thought but to please you, Ada, to… to pay tribute...” 

Glorfindel nodded softly, but did not speak. With respectful tenderness, Echoriath turned the golden elf around and lead him back to the table. The stare that fell upon the sketches betrayed a palpable grief, such that Elladan hurried to his feet and vigilantly flanked his despairing husband. The sallow blue eyes that searched so warily for his own were nothing short of haunted. His words, however, were soaked with love for his brave son. 

“By Elbereth, your craft is keen,” he whispered with a thick throat. “I know not by what power you came to such an exact rendering, ioneth, but you have… you have verily improved upon perfection.” 

Echoriath could not but blush at the generous compliment. His guarded tongue quietly dismissed the praise within seconds of it being uttered; he turned instead to elaboration on some of the more notable details, hoping this might assuage his rattled elder. Elladan, for his part, only wanted some illumination as to what, by the Valar, had so beset his husband. 

“I modeled the riverside after some images in memoirs Erestor procured from his library,” Echoriath gently explained. “You yourself, Ada, have so oft described the fountain, that my imagination could not help but sculpt her true, along with the docks, the gardens, the guildhalls...” Glorfindel swallowed roughly at this mention, but further demurred from comment. “I thought the palace too vulgar, such manly architecture not fitting for a place of peace.”

“Indeed,” Glorfindel assented, ignorant of the crushing grip with which he now held to his mate. “But the spires… they bear the mantles. The Great Houses live again.” 

“They are full of cheer, of creation,” Echoriath assured him. “You would most heartily approve, Ada. In each there is a seat dedicated to their absent Lord, a shrine to his achievements. They await but the freeing of those kept by Mandos’ and-“ The young builder caught himself, his enthusiasm had got the better of him. 

Glorfindel’s glorious countenance went fearfully wan, though he fought willfully to cage his sorrow. 

“Enough,” Elladan ordered of his penitent son, as he enclosed his downcast husband in a daunting embrace. “What madness is this you have wrought, ioneth, however unintentionally?”

“Aye, Echo,” Cuthalion seconded, himself troubled by the scene before him. “What place have your designs so vividly recaptured as to… as to so provoke Ada?” 

“I have yet to officiate a name for the settlement,” Echoriath replied in lieu of a direct response. “Though, if Ada-Fin approves, I would my humble vale bear the name of the place of its inspiration. I would name the town… Gondolen.” 

At the sounding of the name, the company gasped. They examined the sketches with new eyes, awed at Echoriath’s daring, but concerned that his coup had overshot its mark. Glofindel sobbed but once, then with the strength that fought the fiery Balrog itself, he lifted his head from his husband’s consoling shoulder and nodded his mighty approval. 

“The site is blessed in being so named,” he decided, in a rasp. “A valley as fruitful and golden as the ancient glade herself. I hope… I hope to journey there, someday.” 

“You are ever welcome, Ada-Fin, Ada-Dan,” Echoriath insisted, unable to further counsel himself from beaming, nor could he refrain from a swipe at his twin. “Even one such as you, Talion, may be heralded there.” 

With a bold laugh, Cuthalion worked himself into the family knot, all four happy to be woven close again, to be so suddenly reunited. When last they eased apart, Elladan folded both he and Glorfindel into their usual armchair, too kindly a mate to so harshly abandon his still unsteady spouse. Cuthalion avidly took his seat, anxious to hear the tales that accompanied these skilled drawings. Elladan’s argent eyes found his gifted son’s glazed over for a long moment, when he too sought the telling of these adventures. Yet the amber eyes, though absent, glowed hot by a preternatural flame, one both unfamiliar and extremely unnerving to the already unmoored father. 

He prayed no further, fateful mischief was afoot. 

When the golden eyes cleared and focused anew on the assembled family, it was Echoriath’s face that shined. 

“Adar!” his luminous son smiled, with delight and with no little astonishment. “Why did you not write to us of the little ones?!” 

Elladan could not at present fathom a reply, so startled was he by this outright display of clairvoyance. He wondered anew if he would ever truly recognize this strange elf that had returned to them. 

* * *

With a sigh of such contentment that it bordered on intoxication, Tathren eased himself out of the embrace of his lover’s mind and came into the lively scene before him. 

The second of three ebullient elflings – Brithor, he believed – was fished from their bubble-frothed bath and wrapped in a downy towel, lank legs kicking first in protest, then in glee. He was plunked on the window seat beside his owlish brother – possibly Ciryon – who tugged his own towel around him and squashed in his neck, as if a bird ruffling his feathers against a gale. Judging from the sprightly sunlight that streaked across the room, the day would be of springtime temperance despite the current quenching of summer, perfect for his first outing with these rabbit-footed wonders.

Before Elrohir’s arms could net themselves the last of the triplets – Rohrith by default – Brithor sprung down from the ledge and darted over to Tathren’s seat, nevertheless holding his damp towel tight around him. Without even the most innocuous request, he grappled onto his older brother’s legs and settled himself in his lap, even going so far as to jerk at his sleeves until both arms were twined protectively around him. Elrohir watched this too-little-stealthy action with bemusement; Rohrith, now in his father’s arms, with outright contempt.

“Ada!” he wailed in protest. “Ada-Hir, *me* sit on Tafren legs!”

“Tathren only has two legs, ioneth,” Elrohir patiently explained to him. “If you also sit with Tathren, who will sit with Ciryon?” 

His agile mind struck by this able reasoning, the young upstart drew his envious eyes from one cunning twin to the more bashful of the three, balled up forlornly on the window seat. Tathren was heartened to note how immediately the instinct to shield his quieter brother evidenced itself in the bolder Rohrith, who waved a tiny, disappointed hand at Tathren and allowed himself to be placed on the ledge. He then tickled Ciryon’s tummy to force him to smile, his ruse so effective that the two were soon wrestling with abandon, while Brithor essayed a jealous stare of his own. 

All three, however, stopped cold when Legolas entered the chamber. 

Before reporting his news, the archer surveyed his sons’ eager faces – Tathren’s included – and winked with such charm, that all three elflings were instantly under his spell. Tathren recalled that, in his earliest years, he’d felt that a similar aura of mystery surrounded his golden sire, his abilities incredible and his thoughts enigmatic to one so green of the world. Though Legolas had clearly improved on the aloofness that had plagued their relationship, he was too contained an elf to entirely reveal himself, especially to the gamely mind of an elfling, which was only too content to conjure up motives, machinations, and wild legends to qualify the secret dealings they also imagined for him. The Mirkwood elf’s inherent suaveness thusly compelled his triplets, who waited on his opening gambit with an awe usually reserved for lords and godheads. 

“Elladan has sent a messenger,” he announced to all. “There will be revels, noontime, at the Hall of Fire and in her gardens. Celebrian is at this moment preparing the luncheon. Elrond would keep the party spare, other than Elladan and Glorfindel’s family only Erestor’s clan has been invited, perhaps Rumil and his children, as well. I have sent word to Nenuial, though I do not doubt her attendance.” 

“Tis wondrous, maltaren-nin,” Elrohir beamed, as he welcomed Legolas into his embrace. “Our family will be whole, at last.” A volley of titters sounded about, when they stole a moment for a too-brief kiss. 

“Nenuial?” Tathren queried conspiratorially of his brothers, while their fathers took a chance to admire them all assembled. 

“*Nana*,” Brithor whispered to him, his little body already wriggling with excitement. 

As Legolas and Elrohir herded the other two into their bedchamber, Tathren scooped his impish brother into his arms, even as he considered this latest revelation. He was ashamed to admit to himself that he had not even thought to inquire of the elf-maid who was mother to these miraculous three. After snatching a comb from the nightstand and setting to the straightening of Brithor’s silky black hair, he pondered the matter further, searching his memory for a clue as to her identity. Nothing particularly relevant was forthcoming, though his chest did sink some at the thought of his own, long deceased mother. He missed her most in such blissful times, as she was not waiting, as some, in Mandos, but forever lost to the death of men-kind. 

No turn of fate nor prophecy would ever restore her to him. 

Sage, somber argent eyes soon lured his own, his doting father knowing implicitly what dark thoughts troubled his eldest son. The mere recognition of his melancholy soothed him, then the chirpy chatter around him broke into his muted senses, causing his ears to perk up at the mention of another unfamiliar name.

“Tinuviel come too, Ada-Las?” Ciryon asked hesitantly, then winced at a particularly sharp poke from his nearby brother. 

“Ti-nu-vi-el!!” Rohrith trilled mercurially. The other two lent their lilting voices to the impromptu chorale, though Tathren was unsure whether the creature in question was of elfkind, a cherished pet, or an actual nightingale. 

“Hush, pyn-neth,” Legolas admonished them. “Tathren does not yet know of our sweet lady.” 

“You must not spoil the surprise,” Elrohir insisted, barely stifling a smirk of his own. Their taunting, of course, only further spiked Tathren’s curiosity, such that he resorted to rather underhanded measures. 

“Brith-neth,” he cooed to the little one before him. “Will you not tell me of this hallowed one? If you are so very kind, I will…” He remembered a beloved treat from his own elflinghood and cunningly fashioned his bribe. “I will take you for a swim in the river.” 

In the resulting cacophony, Tathren could unfortunately not make out a word. Legolas laughed merrily at his ruse, but a hiss from Elrohir silenced them all.

“Pyn-neth, I warn you, your brother is more mischievous than you three combined,” Elrohir informed them, with studious gravity. “None has yet been born to Aman who match him for wiles. He may promise you a swim in the river, a pony, a bow, even a sword…” Rohrith, bedazzled by the idea of a sword of his own, opened his blossom-mouth, but Legolas quickly clamped a hand over. “…but do reflect on his too-twinkling promises awhile, and remember by who’s indulgence you will be allowed to swim, ride, or train in the fields.” 

“You invulgens, Ada-Hir,” Ciryon calmly impressed on his bristling brothers, who despite this tender chastisement, were wrought with anticipation. 

“Swim, swim, swim!” Brithor finally burst out, closest to the source and so the most affected. “Ada-Las, we go swim ‘day?! 

“If you are courteous at the feast,” Legolas approved. “And play nicely with the others, then perhaps Tathren and his meleth can be persuaded to take you for a swim, *later*. I do not doubt Cuthalion will attend you, as well.” 

“Cufalon!!” Rohrith exclaimed, at the naming of his favorite, and to his mind only, cousin. 

“Tafren have melef?” Ciryon asked of his brother, too cutely inquisitive for words. 

“Aye, I am betrothed,” Tathren explained carefully, wondering at how much to divulge, what might be comprehended. “To Cuthalion’s twin brother, Echoriath. I shall be most proud to introduce you at the feast, pen-gwanur.” 

Too revved up to mark any delicacies of attachment, the three twittered cheerfully at this further news. 

“I fear they are yet too young to appreciate the full intricacies of love relations, ioneth,” Elrohir elucidated. “Though we elders are not!! Have you and Echoriath given thought to when you might bind?” 

Encouraged by both his fathers’ emphatic interest in this topic, Tathren confessed: “We are not yet resolved to any course of action, except that we would be bound within the year.” 

“We will speak on the matter with Elladan and Glofrindel,” Legolas cautiously suggested. “If you would allow some tradition to secret into the arrangements?”

“Most gladly,” Tathren grinned, with irrepressible elation. “Most happily, indeed!” 

Lowering his brimming eyes to the task at hand – the intricate braiding of his brother’s lovely raven hair – Tathren found himself shivering with as much excitement as the triplets, in anticipation of the impending feast. 

 

End of Part Twelve


	13. Part 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The family celebrates the return of its boldest young elves, mysteries are solved.

Part Thirteen

Even by Celebrian’s exacting standards, the intimate luncheon so hastily prepared for them was sublime in its perfection, the springtime sun, the balmy air, and the budding gardens around all conspiring with the ethereal matron to toast her grandsons’ return. Yet Legolas had no care, nor indeed much of an appetite, for the baskets of breads, pots of sweetly and salty preserves, trays of cold meats, and bushels of fruit laid out across the banquet table, for he could not quite bring himself to tare his admiring gaze from the privileged sight of his sons collected around him. 

Though his features remained stoic as always, his aquamarine eyes roved over their jam-smeared faces with a connoisseur’s appreciation. He lingered on the most mundane aspects of their eating: how Ciryon sectioned his honey-buttered lembas *just so*, how Rohrith tore through his pulpy peach halves, how the full glass of oarberry juice teetered in Brithor’s overreaching hands. How reverently his Tathren also regarded them, his merry band of brothers, always ready with a knife to cut clean slices, a wet napkin to dab at a soiled shirt, a steady hand to guide a tipsy cup. These simple, patient gestures effortlessly obliterated all of the anxious father’s cloying fears; that his son would object to them, or that he would outright reject them as some strange, genealogical betrayal. Yet these night-dusk concerns seemed ridiculous on this resplendent day, with none more riveting, to his avid eyes, than Tathren himself. 

Instead of berry tartness, the taste of ore, sharp and ready, was on his tongue, the taste of the adrenalin coursing through his veins. She would come soon, their wispy one; he could already hear the flutter of her heart through the ether. The wood-sprite in him, who was not so matured as to stay off a few tricks of his own, was nearly rabid with anticipation, both of her revelation and of his son’s unknowable reaction. 

Legolas almost himself leapt up from his reverie along with the impish trio across the way, who, now fuelled for the day, could not keep themselves from dragging their blonde brother onto the nearby patch of lawn. Cuthalion and Echoriath eagerly followed suit. The elflings were soon so awed by the dearth of playmates available that they could not quite reconcile themselves to a specific game, so Cuthalion took advantage of their indecision and tackled his cousin with long-suppressed enthusiasm. Three identical pairs of obsidian eyes were soon locked on this gleeful wrestling match, though golden ones studied the triplets with undisguised intensity. Legolas smiled to himself, as he watched Echoriath’s nimble mind consider what he and Elrohir had pondered for nearly five years now: the incredible and indefinable connection between their three twinned sons. 

Though each distinct personality, with some observation and experience, would be revealed to the keen examiner as an onion’s layers were peeled back from the bud, their indelible sameness was a constant distraction. While Elladan and Elrohir had been forcefully unique from their early years - or so Elrond had told them – a spectral link kept these three in close quarters with one another. They made communal decisions, quietly consulted each other on every concern, and acted upon their cares in blindsiding unison. If the Sons of Elrond had been independent-minded, yet complicit, Elrohir’s triplets were in all things as one. Rare was the occasion that they would allow themselves to be parted, or a gift went unshared; even at such a tender age, they were acutely aware of their brothers’ state of being. If one was sick, they gathered protectively around him. If one fatigued, they all took rest. Most astonishingly to their parents, if one transgressed, they all suffered the punishment. Their solidarity was a constant source of pride to Legolas in particular, as he felt the solidity of their mutual feeling was directly bequeathed to them by their courtly sire, his elf-knight and devoted husband. Each child’s individual qualities was, to his lofty eyes, but a deeper coloring of the shades of his beloved’s commendable character, as if Elrohir had been split into three. Though Legolas believed that, as the years passed, their sons’ bond would loose some and allow for autonomy, they would never be estranged, nor lonely, nor embittered towards one another. 

A father’s heart could not pray for more. 

His gauzy eyes broke from them when stealthy fingers slipped through his own. A silken sheath of hair brushed against his neck, as Elrohir sunk into his lap and snug a downy head onto his shoulder. The smell of him, heady ederwood, the faint musk of deep forest haunts, and something elemental, something purely his, overcame him. So suddenly for such a commonplace action, a torrent of love flood through the humble archer, such that he bit his tongue to swallow the spurt of fumbling, unformed troths that threatened to burst forth and to embarrass him before the company about. His grip on his elf-knight was such that Elrohir threw him a questioning glance, but read his brimming eyes well enough. He soothed him with a balming kiss, drank in some of his mate’s raging emotion and stopped his ardor with a soft lap of his tongue. With a sigh, he rested his head back into its nook, while beyond Tathren was giddily fighting off a full-fledged elfling assault. 

“It appears our fears were grossly unfounded, meleth,” Elrohir commented lazily. “They adore him already.” 

“They will keep him home awhile, I wager,” Legolas remarked, still flush with feeling. “Though I confess to some curiosity towards this settlement of theirs. Perhaps we might enjoy a summer there, in the coming years.” 

“My brother and his mate are similarly resolved,” Elrohir noted. “Though I would not think on a journey until our little ones have seen at least twenty summers. Which is not a point I would deliberately chose to linger upon, as you well know. Too quickly will the years pass, and with them their childhood into legend.” 

“Then we must beget more elflings, lest you turn maudlin,” Legolas teased him affectionately, eliciting a groan. 

“Nay, melethron,” Elrohir muttered into his neck, as he bent to caress the taut skin. “I believe my paternity is permanently sated by these hallowed blessings before us. Thank Elbereth!” 

Legolas chuckled, tucked his husband closer still. As he drifted into another daydream, he recalled to himself a time when the thought of siring them another babe veritably turned his elf-knight’s stomach over on itself. Yet as the years after Tathren’s departure stretched impossibly long, even for one of elfkind, Elrohir had secretly reconsidered the hasty choice made after months of unyielding sickness. He could sire babes just as well without the anguished trial of the lust-fever. The price to his bonded was as ever; Legolas was yet more than willing to pay the reasonable toll for their family’s expansion. A chance throw off an untested horse had rushed Nenuial into the Healing Halls with a fractured thigh-bone and into his darkling husband’s acquaintance during her subsequent convalescence. Legolas had himself recaptured, tamed, and tended the sprightly steed, who two summers later bravely carried a water-broken Nenuial back to the Healing Halls, to bear their glorious brood.

That night was yet a fugue in his mind, pierced only by a few sharp, vital images: Elrohir’s ropy frame knotted into a fireside armchair, waiting-out the endless hours of contractions; that first sight of Rohrith, red and wriggling in Elrond’s bloody hands; the jaw-dropping emergence of a third babe, Ciryon, when both he and Elrohir held bundles in their arms; Nenuial’s exhausted, despairing face when all three infants began to bleat for her arms, for her milk. How the three of them had toiled through the fractious days and nights that followed, that first maddening month of improvisation, of invention, when only sheer reverence for their miraculous babes kept them steady, standing. The elegant ellyth had proved herself their match in valor and in heart, as well as an invaluably mischievous partner-in-crime. 

Indeed, as the lady herself wafted through the patio doors bearing a most precious cargo, Elrohir gladly laxed his hold so that Legolas could stand to greet her. His elf-knight was a ghost behind him, as they sprang up to her assistance. 

*

With a wilding cry, the triplets peeled off him and raced back towards the table.

After grappling too quickly to his feet, Tathren swooned, staggered back. Cuthalion latched on to him, steadied him with a firm hold, fearful their trials had sickened the weary traveler. Dazed, Tathren lurched away, then halted, with a woozy smirk, to let his cousin center him. 

Tathren felt he moved through the air around him as though swathed in a churn of cream. This was not the sultry otherworld of Echoriath’s familiar summons, but a weirded, overbright atmosphere, as if he was permanently stuck in the glaring reflection of Arien’s boldest rays. The world about him was saturated, nearly swollen with color; he momentarily worried one of his brothers, amidst their boundless excitement, had struck him too hard. He heard Cuthalion chuckle that he was punch drunk, but Tathren could only swerve his head towards the patio beyond and sluggishly observe the goings on there. 

An ellyth of such dusk-shroud sensuality - that she could be no other than the naneth of his wolfine brothers - had made a quiet entrance, though her sons currently raced to her side. His fathers had unburdened her of several packs and bundles, so she knelt to welcome her bouncing boys into arms of such ample stretch, one might mistake her for bounteous Elbereth, were not the Lady reputed to be wrought of starshine itself. Black crucible eyes took in the outpour of affection from her lush brood, who curled about their mother cat like a pack of besotted kittens. Though their sleek raven hair and regal faces were pure elf-knight, their buttery complexions and exotic almond eyes were bequeathed to them by her luxurious beauty alone; indeed, Tathren had never seen her like in all the tribes of elfkind. 

He was suddenly distracted from this sweetly scene of nurture by a strange, internal tug. The space about him thickened further; though Cuthalion strengthened his grip, Tathren felt that it laxed. His head swam around to seek Echoriath, but the sight of him only further stunned. His beloved’s eyes were bright as a beacon through the midnight fog, incandescent as sparked phosphors in the ocean deep. Yet, unlike other times of clairvoyance, he was cut off from their communion, his power cold, scowering his skin such that he was forced to turn away, to wrench even from unwitting Cuthalion. The otherworld, which drowned out all of his senses, grew glutinous as treacle, the bleed of uproarious color almost nauseating. Where was the tipple of his Echo’s outstretched mind over his peaked skin, the impatient, lascivious jolts up his spine from afar or the swarthy balm of his affections? The present had never before been so remote when he let his fea spread through the ether, as his beloved had taught him; the air so chill nor his eyes so burning from sight of his pulchritudinous surroundings. As he fought to take even the most feeble step, he thought he might faint away, until a close-held presence stilled him.

From the beyond, the lilting melody sounded out, lone and lulling. 

He was warmed, impossibly warmed, by a tenor of feeling such as he’d never experienced before. The haunting voice, so rich, so eloquent, filled him with such emotion that Tathren thought he might choke on his own elation. Hot tears rolled down his ripe cheeks, blinded him such that he did not mark the advent of his father, until his overwrought senses located the source of the harrowing, angelic voice from within those very arms. Tathren blotted his eyes with fevered palms, eager to behold the cunning necromancer that has so ensorcelled him, for he was sure, somehow, the creature held his Ada equally in its thrall. He had sensed his sire there, in the otherworld, beside him, within him, though how he could not rightly fathom. 

The song ended swiftly; he broke out of the ether with a startling slap.

With a ripping cough, he cleared his head. He was instantly blanketed by Echoriath’s acute concern, though the darkling elf remained cautiously aloft of him. Cuthalion also waited nearby, poised to hug or hold, should the necessity arise. With a rousing shudder, he found himself again, then foist absent eyes on his waiting father. The sight nearly sundered him. 

There, tucked in his arms, was a… a bundle… the bundle from before… impossible. Inconceivable. 

One of Elbereth’s most immaculate wonders, for certes. 

“Tathen,” Legolas beamed, himself nearly overcome by the momentous circumstance. “This is my little nightingale… our Tinuviel.” He could not resist kissing the crown of the babe’s golden hair, like spun starlight, nor tickling her teardrop ear. “Your sister.” 

Tathren could naught but gape at the precocious babe, not seven moons old. She was a pure Sinda pearl, as jewel-eyed and crystalline as the father and foremother in whose image she was so magnificently rendered. He himself must resemble her, Tathren realized with a start; the idea unknown, but not unwelcome. A *sister*. 

“You are her sire, Ada,” he noted rather dumbly, reaching out a finger for her tiny hand. She eagerly clasped onto him, azure eyes alight, a smile quickened with the mercury of the Mirkwood line stretching out the bow of her lips. 

“He is shrewd, my fair cousin,” Cuthalion snickered at him, though Legolas demurred. 

“Shush, Talion,” Echoriath snapped, then wove a supportive arm around his beloved. “Meleth, would you not like to hold her?” 

“I… I believe I would,” Tathren whispered, almost surprised at himself. “Very much.” Pleased by this, Legolas eased his precious one into her abashed brother’s arms, though Tinuviel herself took to him like a duck to water, gurgling merrily and gazing up at him with palpable adoration. As he was again infused by her peerless warmth, he bent to kiss her brow. Her softness lured his nose further down to her tummy, until he was nearly intoxicated by her downy scent. “She smells like springtime, like…” He sighed, then, and turned suddenly solemn. “Ada, I will not falter in her keeping. I will be the finest example to her, to all my newly kin, teach them acts of honor and gallantry, be tender with them, demonstrate compassion even in adversity, and-“

“We have no doubt of your valor, pen-tathar,” Elrohir grinned, as he linked himself with Legolas. “You are ever our firstborn and dearly son.” 

Tathren blushed fiercely, overwhelmed as he was by his riotous emotions, but managed nevertheless to inquire: “But who is Naneth to this beauty, Ada?” 

“I am Nana to all,” Nenuial smiled, as she joined their circle. Ciryon was folded tightly in her arms, his twins ambling along amidst their mother’s skirts. “Mae govannen, Tathren Legolasion. I have longed to make your acquaintance, and have my daughter know her last, elusive kinsbrother.” 

“Tinuviel,” Ciryon murmured, as he slowly reached over to pet his sister’s hair. 

Rohrith and Brithor, not to be left out, each sought the warm embrace of one of their fathers, instinctively judging their earlier raucousness unseemly at this hush moment. Their onyx eyes peered rapturously from father to brother, mother to second father, surrounded as they were by four noble eldar, who they intuited would love them without measure, eternally. Rohrith reached for Cuthalion, eager that his cousin to be included, while Brithor played with Echoriath’s braid over Legolas’ shoulder. The twins took their place among the gathering, neither daring to break the silence, pregnant as it was with unspeakable emotion. 

Tathren greeted Nenuial with a soft peck to her cheek, as their extended family strolled down from the patio, to join the circle of their beloved ones. 

* * *

On such a sultry afternoon, there was but one sight for his lazy, languid eyes. 

Sunlight tippled through the waves of her silver hair like Arien’s giddy rays over the river swells. A face as ripe, round, and peach-kissed as a harvest moon beamed sagely at her newly granddaughter, though her skin was as smooth and milky as on their binding day. Gone was any trace of the grief that had dimmed the benevolent light of her soul flame, blanketed her in a numbing darkness not even his enduring love could penetrate. Surrounded, here, by all the colors of their extended family, she was of a more giving radiance than her own mother’s mystery-shrouding shine, peerless in her glory, in his adoring eyes as luminous as the Lady herself. 

By some exceptional turn of fate, she was indeed his lady. His Celebrian. 

Once dusky Nenuial was finished nursing, she indulged the covetous grandmother beside her and passed over her dozy daughter. The babe yawned daintily, then tucked sweetly into her shoulder. Elrond well knew the lure of that satiny nook; while he admired the three generations of elf-maid ensconced so serenely on the river bank - their bare, lithe legs dangling over the bushels of grass at the edge, their toes tippling the water – he longed to press his own face into that voluptuous bosom and bear a needful husband’s coddling. He vowed he would, before nightfall. 

A brash spray startled him out of his reverie, as titanic twin shadows blocked out the sky. With a last flick of their sopping hair, Elladan and Elrohir collapsed onto the lawn beside him, as gamely as their elfling selves three-thousand years before. Both snickered with raucous mischief, knowing implicitly well whom their father was admiring and what scarlet thoughts his rapt mind so avidly perused. Elrond snorted, unashamed, and with the imperious cast of his eyes took a longly gander at the two strapping sons who blessed his union. Indeed, as the brethren quit their taunting and extended their sinuous frames for sun-drying, his gaze drifted over to the antics of their mates, elder children, and impish ones, yet roughhousing in the gentle of the river rush. 

Haloes gilding their burnished manes as laurels might, the hallowed warriors Glorfindel, slayer of the Balrog, and Legolas, archer of the Fellowship, were opposing points on a pentagon, a fluid battlefield that included Cuthalion, Echoriath, and Tathren. All were quite merrily engaged in an ecstatic round of toss-the-elflings, with Brithor and Rohrith as willing, shrieking implements. Each sprightly one would be routinely launched into the air, landing either in the arms of an elder or in the water before them, only to be wrenched from the sea flow and thrown anew, towards another easy target. The mature elves were careful keep the play cheerful; each agile enough, from sparring, from training, to take care not to spook the little ones. To this end, the temperate Ciryon was perched on a nearby rock. He took more pleasure in gleeful observation than in participation, his cries, crows, and emphatic gesticulations often rolling him aft, into the deep. Legolas, luckily, kept a hawk eye on the most reserved of his triplets, batting an occasional whip of water from behind, to goad him, and repeatedly fishing him out of the current. 

When Brithor gulped back too much water and began to cough, the vigilant father halted the play awhile. Elrohir perked his head up from the berth of his arm, but demurred when the little one hugged Legolas close. Rohrith was dredged out of the swells by Cuthalion, who, despite some protest, stayed him. Ciryon instinctively latched onto Legolas’ back, reaching out to stroke his recovering brother’s hair. Cuthalion swam the missing link over to them; the three were soon chirping mercurially at him, while they caught their respective breaths from the whirlwind excitement of the afternoon. A reverent Legolas had never looked so peaceful as among these jovial three, Elrond reflected to himself, not in all the centuries he’d known him. 

His own ponderous gaze marked the worshipful argent eyes of his secondborn twin son, who drank in this quiet scene as parched land quenched by rainfall. The wry smirk that eventually twisted his lips caused Elrond’s shrewd eyes to switch back, in time for the most rapturous display of raw emotion he’d witnessed since last Legolas and Elrohir embraced, or Glofindel and Elladan together found a secret corner. Tathren and Echoriath, their wrought limbs entwined beneath the surface, had escaped to that quiescent space where only they could exist for the other, their mated looks smoldering with fondness, with regard. Elrond himself felt the heat of their eventual kiss, he doubted any in attendance would not think to their own mate in view of such a pure, elemental gesture of love. Hands moved over arching shoulders, through swaths of sodden hair, palms to cup faces and fingers to purr up ear lobes; the kiss was such that Illuvatar himself might weep at the potency of their incendiary caress. 

In that hot minute, Elrond knew his growing concerns were founded in truth, not speculation. 

The triplets, however, thought this sensuous act the most hysterical thing. With a cackle of such mischief a Lord could only be concerned for the future sanctity of their fair vale, the wilding three doused their brother and his betrothed in a flurry of slapping splashes, effectively rousing both their senses and their annoyance. Tathren, wicked-eyed in fever’s wake, spared little time in exacting his revenge; the echoes of which still sounded out a quarter hour later, when Elrond’s own twins yet lounged on either side of him. 

“Whenever I dared to imagine our fates, in other, more troubled times,” he noted hushly. “I never thought you would beget me such a glorious brood, gwenyn. I must confess, their majesty unmoors me still. Indeed, I could not have prayed for more worthy mates, more beautiful children for my own tender ones.” 

“You are kindly in your words, Ada,” Elladan praised him. “But not overgenerous. Our kindred are…” He paused a moment, unable to express the myriad emotions flooding his heart. “When Nana passed over, and for myself Glorfindel was so cold, and then so swift upon this heartbreak Arwen declared her choice… I had feared our family would never again know the wholeness of our early years. I feared even if the Shadow did not fall, we would never be together as before, without ghosts in the stead of Nazgul, without the specter of our golden time haunting us even in these lush glades, in this forever realm.” 

“Times here are not without their own trials,” Elrond commented sensibly. “But with such ones to hearten us, how can we despair? Take the lesson, ion-nin. Valor does not go unrewarded. Our most secret cares are not forgotten by the Valar above.” 

“Then Elbereth will grant us a daughter of our own?” Elladan questioned coyly. 

“You long for a little ellyth to lighten the step of two lead-footed warriors?” Elrohir cunningly teased. “By Eru, Elladan, you verily are my own reflection! You cannot act without my example! First in the casting off of our minorities, then in love’s gentling, then into the throes of war, lately in the begetting of babes, and now in the potential siring of a maid-child! I wonder who you might have followed had I not been born to guide you?” 

With an indignant, though mirthful, grunt of protest, Elladan countered: “If I have followed your example, it was but to better it. While you fumbled into majority, bedding willy-nilly what presented itself before you, I dedicated myself to the pursuit of excellence and won the heart of the Balrog-slayer himself. I firstly pledged vengeance on Nana’s injury, if I remember right, and to speak of fumbling, let us not even broach the subject of your firstborn’s accidental begetting. And mark well, gwanur, that it is my own bashful son’s beauty that keeps Tathren at home wherever he may journey, his harbor of geniality and of gentility into which your adventure-minded son chooses to weigh anchor for his eternity.”

“Methinks you are mightily deceived, gwanur-nin,” Elrohir shot amusedly back. “If not forthrightly deluded, if you believe a child of your Echoriath’s earlier timidity could possibly woo one such as my ebullient Tathren. What effort did he expend? What charms did he ploy? Nay, twas my son who drew out the elf in your admittedly lovely child, and it will be he who keeps them.” 

“Echoriath bedazzled Tathren from the very minute of his birth!” Elladan insisted. “A glimpse of his eyes and he was bested.” 

“*Ensorcelled*, by troth,” Elrohir underlined. “A natural necromancer the darkling one may be, but it was Tathren’s fine qualities that piqued his interest from early infancy. My son, though of a compelling comeliness, is no sorcerer and needs no otherworldly aid in seduction.” 

“As attested to by the legions of bereft Dunedain ladies in his wake,” Elladan needled him to the sticking point. “Or have you repressed the shameful memory entirely of their assault on Imladris, *three years* before the elfling’s actual majority, to reclaim the one who blazed through their ranks when he was thought to be so innocently passing a few years roaming the northern realms with his mother and her tribe. And these but practice rounds for his true target: Elessar’s heir.” 

“Let us then pass to talk of Echoriath’s ardent-loined twin,” Elrohir daringly retorted. “To speak of a fractious coming on of first majority! Of maids, elven and womankind alike, weeping out their cares by the glimmering pool of Ithilien.” 

“Cease this mischief, gwenyn, before we blacken the repute of your foster brother *and* the dearly Neyanna,” Elrond finally intervened, but not without a smirk of his own. “And you both summon up the ire of the father that has praised your families fair and bountiful.” 

“Forgive us, Ada,” they sang in unison, swallowing back smiles of glee the triplets would envy.

The flint of challenge was still in their argent eyes, but both brothers smartly stepped down. Their occasional sparring, though rarer in maturity, kept them both humble and their bond intact. Elrond knew this better than most, but also that they were not yet so wise as to refrain from eventually coming to blows, should their heavy-feathered arrows accidentally hit on a sensitive area. In any case, they had raised a matter than concerned him some. 

Before he had a chance to voice this, however, Elladan himself inquired: “In truth, I am glad of this chance to speak with you, Adar. Might I court your counsel on a… a matter that affects both of our clans?” 

“Certainly, my brave one,” Elrond assented. “What matter presses upon you?”

“You would speak of the spark,” Elrohir easily guessed, sobering himself. “The faint shimmer that crowns their irises, brighter than before. I have marked it, as well.” 

Elladan nodded, his face uncertain of what emotion to portray, as he himself was not reconciled to a particular conviction. 

“Think you, Ada, that they…?” he asked outright. “Not purposefully, for certes, but their circumstances were… of an uncommon extremity.”

“Indeed,” Elrond considered, having himself recognized the telltale shine in the eyes of his two besotted grandsons. Before passing judgment, he regarded each of his twins in turn. Neither seemed overly disturbed; they were naught but anxious that their children be righteously bound, but bound they would most definitively have them. “I fear the ways of the Maiar are yet strange to one born so late in the First Age, as I, when they had retreated from Beleriand and were entirely absent from Arda. In truth, I would both consult with Erestor and pose some questions to Echoriath himself, as his own experience of these uncommon powers are vital to our understanding of them.”

“His powers go beyond mere foresight, or mindspeak,” Elladan related to them. “Even through the ether, he can communicate with Tathren, know his experiences and emotions. The force of this information goes beyond a binding link…”

“And therefore cannot be immediately assumed to result from accidental binding,” Elrond reasoned. “These powers of Echoriath’s were in evidence before they departed the vale. While I myself had noted the flint embedded in their irises, its flicker is not of the effulgence of the binding hue. Though Echoriath is possessed of an overabundance of Maiaran potential, he is yet of elfkind. We are bound in love, in spirit, and in blood. If they have not performed the blood-rite, then they are but betrothed. Their souls are perhaps too intimately mated, but what of this? They will soon be properly bound, or am I mistaken?” 

“We have yet to commence our negotiations,” Elrohir informed him, seizing up his twin with a wolfish gleam to his eyes. 

“But I imagine we can resolve ourselves without too much bloodshed,” Elladan finished for him, grinning with similar mock-spite. 

“Valar bless Legolas and Glorfindel with patience,” Elrond chuckled wryly, opening his arms to embrace his dear sons. “Though methinks tis your Naneth and I who are truly the blessed ones.” 

“As we, by your heartening example, Ada,” they seconded, relaxing against their father as in times of old. 

With a sigh, he tangled his lissome fingers in the ebony hair of the twin heads on his chest, reminded anew of another lively, languorous day of elflings by the riverside, three thousand springs ago. 

* * *

Tathren crept down the hallway as through a patch of nettles, the gauzy veils of moonlight laced with intricate, willow bough shadows from their garden thicket. He left a choir of chirpy questions behind him, as he sought the quietude of his Adar’s candlelit study, a volume of Anestir’s verses and a mug of hot cider enough to still somnambulant the blood that yet galloped through his veins. After three long weeks of the wave-skipping ship and a day of startling revelations, he would have thought himself unable to stand upright at such a late hour, but his trio of brothers’ relentless energy was perilously infectious to one whom exhaustion so threatened as he. The chance to tell the triplets bedtime stories his verily present sire had once imparted to him had invigorated him anew, infused him with enough attentiveness to see well past the midnight hour.

Suitable company might very well elude him this night. Perhaps he should seek out his cousins? 

As he padded into the hush study, he came upon a heartening sight if ever one there was. Before the flickering hearth was Elrohir, nested into the corner of their billow-cushioned sofa, Tinuviel cradled in his arms. The darkling elf whispered secrets to his drowsy daughter as he had once done to his golden-crowned son. Tathren knew his father relished these moments of complicity with his babes, a peaceful time of nurture, of communion with a child not of his siring, thus was reluctant to disturb them. Something within, however, stayed him a second too long, enough for Elrohir to spy him and to beckon with an ample smile. He thought but to perch nearby, but the elf-knight gladly folded him into his embrace; they twined such that both shared in berthing the little one. Tathren imagined that his father was particularly adept at this maneuver, as with this method both he and Ada-Las could take part in the coddling of their babes, yet took great comfort in their closeness, such that he soon rested a groggy head in the crook of his doting Adar’s neck. His father’s warmth enveloped him, lulled him, rich with balmy feeling and implicit love. 

All three luxuriated in the serenity of their tight hold, one with the moment, with one another. 

“My treasures,” Elrohir murmured, giving them both a gentle squeeze. “I adore you as my own, dears, never doubt you are my ones, the vessels of my heart’s love.” 

“As you are the source of our security, Ada,” Tathren vowed. “Without your immovable foundation, we could not venture so boldly forth, nor… nor offer our own mates a true tenor of love. Not without your example, your peerless care.” 

“I know it, pen-tathar,” Elrohir acknowledged softly, then kissed the crown of his golden son’s hair. “Sleep, if you would, ioneth. It would hearten me to keep you awhile. You must be weary.” 

“Nay, I am quite awake,” Tathren insisted, though made no move to break from him. “But the hour is late for this twinkly one. Will Nenuial not soon come to fetch her?” 

“She has, quite wonderfully, agreed that Tinuviel should spend her first night with her Adar,” Elrohir related to him with such contentment, that Tathren could verily sense the force of his smile. “Just the one, for she is yet too tiny to quit her Nana’s breast for long, but Nenuial was gracious enough to understand that… that to see our family reunited affected us deeply. That I will soon slink into your Ada-Las’ embrace and know all our babes are gathered here, with us. All our precious ones.” 

“Ada, you will have me weep before long!” Tathren exclaimed, but did indeed swallow hard. 

Elrohir chuckled fondly, kissed his crown again.

“Will you soon meet Echoriath?” he inquired, with blatant melancholy. “Could you not lure him here a night?” 

“As our talan is yet closed, so we have agreed to remain apart,” Tathren assured him. “Grandsire has his ear, for now, and I could not dare suggest he keep Talion at bay until morn. But this is of little consequence to us, we have before us an eternity of nights. I wanted to stay in with my brothers. Indeed, I also hoped to court your attentions awhile, Ada.” 

“You are fortunate, tathrelasse,” Elrohir teased him. “I am here to attend you. What is your will?”

“Though I trust the entire affair is meticulously rendered in your journals,” Tathren remarked pointedly, adjusting their hold that he might gaze upon his father’s regal face as he spoke. “I would know of the begetting of my, ahem, bushel of brothers, and this precious starling before us. If the subject is not too intimate… but surely there is a chaste version I might be recounted?” 

“I would gladly impart the tale to you,” Elrohir nodded, with undisguised enthusiasm. “But first, ioneth, you must assure me that… that you do not fault us for taking such measures in your absence to expand our family. I know that, upon your last return, you encouraged Ada-Las to sire you a brother, but we were… *are* nevertheless concerned that these newly ones are not entirely welcome by you. That… that you might feel they replace you in our hearts. I would… I would like to assure you, in turn, that none could take the place of such a sterling son in our regard, that our hearts have merely expanded to encompass you all-“

“Ada, I am more than happy to find myself verily overburdened with siblings,” Tathren insisted, his smile broadening exponentially. “We have struggled in the past, true, to solder our relations, but before I departed I committed to the bettering of our bond and that commitment has not waned these last years. I feel that these new additions to our house can only enliven it, if the joy witnessed just this very day is any example. I admit to some astonishment at their revelation, who could not be shocked by such a thing, but they are… truly, Ada, they are already so dear to me. Indeed, I… I have also taken some measures to assure my place in their lives.” He paused a moment to collect himself, unsure of how to express his lately conclusions. “I spoke briefly with Echo after supper, but he had already guessed the matter of my conversation. We will not leave the vale for any great length of time until Tinuviel has reached her majority.” 

“How now?” Elrohir gasped, startled by this timely decision. 

“We marked Ada-Las’ conversation with Ada-Dan and Ada-Fin about the Sindar,” he continued to illuminate. “Eight years have passed and no ground has been broke for their housing. Surely they do not expect to return to Laurelin? They will feel more settled if they have homes, and we… we are the elves to build them.” 

“I fear initial negotiations have not gone as hoped,” Elrohir sighed warily, impressed by his son’s ambition but wary of the task at hand. “With Thranduil returned up north, most are simply biding their time before they can return.” 

“They may play the martyr, but we are shrewder,” Tathren underlined. “I am Sinda myself, as is Ada-Las. We are of Thranduil’s very line. They will broke with us, or court injury to their king. When they see Echo’s designs and know that they will partake in their construction, thus learning how to build themselves even finer homes in Laurelin, even their Sindar pride will be appeased. Should they stay or go, in the end, we will have new houses for our folk.” He turned his eyes on Tinuviel, who’s eyelids fluttered mightily in her fight against slumber. “For the children this sweetly child may berth herself, one day.”

“She knows you,” Elrohir commented, side-stepping the issue. “Twas she who alerted me to your presence. Already she speaks fondly of you, this new being that lures her. She sings to us of your light. To know that you will be here to guide her, secure and succor her… let the Sindar be resolve as they will. I would have you home for a time, if you are willing.” 

“I could not think of keeping away,” Tathren promised him, with a complicit wink to his sister. Heartened by his regard, she gave in to sleep at last. “Though we must occasionally summer in Gondolen, lest it fall to seed under the troubled Council’s sloe-eyed watch.” 

“Perhaps we will accompany you,” Elrohir considered. “To see this marvelous place.” 

“I would be glad of it,” Tathren encouraged him, his thoughts turning to an earlier request. “Now, you have distracted me enough from my mission, Ada. Will you not relate to me the tale of the wilding three and this radiant star-child?” 

Elrohir could not suppress a snicker at this too-acute description, but gladly launched himself into the tale. Indeed, he had been anxious to tell it anew, as all in his acquaintance were beyond exasperated by his recurrent indulgence in such storytelling. With Tathren, he could add a layer of intimacy he had only shared with Elladan, so the chance to unburden himself was intensely welcome to him. He collected his thoughts, careful choosing which episode might properly set the course.

“The matter emerged the very night after your imploring to Ada-Las on the archery fields,” Elrohir began. “I agreed to consider the potential for a second child. I was soon struck with fever and we resolved that fate had steered us in the appropriate direction. After suffering months of torment and after my ravaging sickness during our troubled time, I was naturally disinclined to see the fever return. Legolas understood my distress and agreed that our family was ample enough. But my dearly husband understands me better than any other. He knew time would pass, and so would memory of the fever, and I would eventually be struck with the realization that I need not court the fever anew in order to sire a child. Concomitant with this realization, that came over me by Legolas’ intuitive clock in the second long year of your absence, was my acquaintance with Nenuial. As we treated her in the Healing Halls, I came to know her, to befriend her as a trueheart and be appraised of her woeful tale.” 

“Aye, she is kindly,” Tathren interrupted him. “Twas as if the Evenstar herself had been reborn.” 

Elrohir’s breath caught at this comparison, he shut his flooding eyes. “Think you… do you truly think them so similar?”

“She even smells like aunt Arwen, of violets and mist,” Tathren remarked cautiously. “Had the thought never occurred… Ada, I have injured you!” 

“Nay,” he assured him, releasing a long, calming exhalation. “I am but overcome by… by the Valar’s care. Elbereth blinded me to the true beauty of Nenuial’s nature, so that I might reap such a peerless bounty. That I might have both children and sister again.” He crushed Tathren to him, then, a few stray tears spilling down his cheeks. “You are keen, pen-tathar.” 

“But tell me, Ada,” he pursued. “What pains have so afflicted such a fair lady?” 

“Nenuial is of the First Age,” Elrohir elucidated, after some steadying breaths. “She is bond-sister to your foremother, Galadriel, through her brother Aegnor. Though they had wanted children through the many centuries of their binding, her husband was beset by a rare affliction, even among elfkind. Try as they may, he could not sire her a child. Twas Galadriel herself who discerned Aegnor was the troubled one in their bond, though none could think on a remedy. When Aegnor fell in the Dagor Bragollach and was ushered to Mandos, her childlessness became even more acute. She dwelt in Lindon awhile during the Second Age, then finally sailed to Valimar, hoping her beloved Aegnor would soon return, as others of his age had been slowly quitting Mandos. Her wait has yet been in vain. When she heard, through the White Lady herself, of Idril’s prophecy, she came to Telperion to read the scroll in person, desperate to glean some notion of when her husband might be re-embodied. She fell from her horse beyond the limits of our compound… and has since cultivated quite a crop of children for her husband to cherish along with us, upon his return. The triplets are, after all, kindred to him through a lengthy family line.” 

“Do they know of this other father?” Tathren inquired.

“Indeed, they do,” Elrohir replied. “Though the intricacies of his relation to them and the events of his passing will be kept for later years. They know only their Nana is bound to another elf, who is at Mandos. Though they do not truly comprehend the purpose of Mandos and its place in our world, they are quite glad that Nana has a meleth to hearten her. There was a time when they feared for her solitude, though Nenuial is quite a social elf.”

“This may be overstepping my own bounds somewhat,” Tathren gently furthered his questions. “But how did Ada-Las come to be convinced to…?” 

Elrohir smiled knowingly at the potent inquiry, but was glad to explain: “Unlike my brother’s experience, the siring of our tempestuous three was no great cause for concern. I have experience of lying with maids, I did not fear for my interest nor my potency. We had both come to regard Nenuial as a sister and she herself longed so for her mate’s return that there would be no confusing the tenor of her affections. Legolas is especially fond of her; they were both reared in times of great strife and share a similarly resilient outlook. They are both also quite reserved in the disclosure of their private affairs, but they came to trust each other enough to mutually disclose. She has come to be a true partner with us, a giving mother and the dearest of friends. Your Ada-Las waited by this very fire while I sired our babes, he says the time of reflection was quite beneficial to him. Afterwards, he joined us in bed and we all curled up together, rubbing Nenuial’s stomach, encouraging our little one to come forth. I hear the babe’s first, timorous bleat by the night’s end. How we rejoiced! We could not rest until dawn, thinking of the future.” Elrohir was lost awhile to remembrance, of how heartily Legolas had kissed him then, of how he declared the gift of their child the most beautiful he’d ever been given and of how sensuously he’d reclaimed him the night after. His husband truly was the second half of his very soul. “Two years ago, my own genteel, yet often fearfully tenacious naneth came to visit her grandsons and, in closed council with me, hastened to chastise that we had not properly treated Nenuial. I had not the faintest notion of what she spoke of, as I indicated to her, being an oafish ellon by birth from her very own womb, but she gladly appraised me of the situation. Though Nenuial was more than content with our darkling tribe, she had confessed to Nana that she had always wanted for a daughter. That she feared in the years to come she would be entirely surrounded by warriors and would be, though cherished by her sons, kept from their company, even by her own mate, who would no doubt immediately cotton to three young fledglings to train and hunt with.”

“Ha!” Tathren exclaimed mirthfully. “I would never have thought on such a notion.” 

“Nor we,” Elrohir admitted. “I was quite glad Nana had thought to bring up the concerns and the longing Nenuial herself would never dare mention, even to my husband’s soft ears. When I appraised Legolas of this complication, it took him no time at all to agree to expand our family. I consulted Erestor, who thought there might be a technique or two we might try to ensure the siring of an ellyth, though no method was proven infallible. Erestor spoke his explanations directly to me. As his lecture went on, as they tend to do, I noted Legolas’ countenance became shroud. In the following days, he grew increasingly distracted and kept insisting that we delay our conversation with Nenuial herself. I became gravely concerned for his well being, perhaps the first siring had affected him in ways unapparent until now? I soon created a private occasion in which to broach this with him, and to my ready shock, he proclaimed himself resolved to sire the babe himself. I still, to this very moment, cannot say what decided him, though I have my… my suspicions. One Nenuial herself agreed… I marveled at the ease of his resolution. He has never since betrayed an ounce of distress, not even on the night he lay with her. Indeed, he likes to gloat that, in the haze after their coupling, she mumbled that he pleased her much more than I.” 

“Saes, Ada, spare me your crudeness,” Tathren grunted, but smirked nonetheless. “But I do admire the fruit of your labors, asleep at long last.” He nuzzled his sister’s plump belly, drinking in her peachy smell.

“As all goodly elflings should be,” Elrohir noted, but snatched a kiss from his son’s flaxen crown. “Yourself included, pen-tathar. You’ve had your storytime, now you best tuck up. I fear you will discover yourself with a bed-full of brothers, come dawn’s first light.” 

“Could this elfling not steal a few moments more in the arms of his Adar?” Tathren whispered, rather reluctant to quit his father’s balming heat. In truth, he’d not felt so tight with him since their advent in Aman and was loathe to loose the tender feeling between them. 

Elrohir, moved by this show of affection, could not dare contemplate refusing him. He drew his two treasures even further into his blithe embrace, their blanketing bodies the most comfort a father’s heart could ever wish for. 

* * *

Even through the copper-tinted haze of far too many goblets of miruvor, Cuthalion regarded the elf before him with unremitting awe. 

The colony’s founding had battered and trenched a brute-cut body of Echoriath’s formerly lank frame, his torso sleek, sculpted, his muscular limbs sinuous. Even splayed listlessly across a chaise longue, clad in nothing but supple velvet breeches, there was an unrefined, almost feral quality to his posture, hewn in the wilds of their undiscovered southlands. His keen mind had grown cunning; his wit sharp and his humor caustic, in the manner of his brash adventuring companions. Yet his lush features bespoke a regal grace inherited from their valiant sire, the alabaster skin against an ebony crown of hair that marked him of Elrond’s line. He was still gullible in that familiar way, susceptible to prods at his bashfulness and jibes about his solitary nature, which would forever hold sway in his professional affairs. His tales of the settlement concerned tasks, structure, resources, and horticultural ambitions, rarely did he speak of elves he had encountered or like minds he’d befriended, though Cuthalion did not doubt there were an overlooked few who had impressed him. 

He was altogether enigmatic, this elf that had returned to them, an amalgamation of Echoriaths old and improved. At times during their long night of conversation and of ablutions, Cuthalion struggled to recognize even a glimmer of his cherished brother; other times he was fiercely reminded of how little the darkling elf had inherently changed. To an elf of Cuthalion’s wiles, of course, this puzzling behavior gave him leave to test his brother’s newly drawn boundaries. 

What fun would their reunion be without a smidge of perspicacity, if he were not the rabble-rousing Cuthalion of longstanding renown? 

With the encouragement of several carafes of both miruvor and, earlier, a fine selection of wines, he found himself faced with an elf exhausted from a tumultuous, emotional day, suitably plied by drink, kept from his beloved by circumstance, and bared down to nothing but his breeches. After hours of relating remembrances, tossing off barbs, and launching into labyrinthine digressions, Echoriath yet tussled with the encroaching oblivion of heavy sleep, but his irrepressible desire to please his brother kept him victorious thus far. To this end, he dumped another fill of miruvor into his empty goblet and drank generously from the brimming cup, smacking his lips at the bitter aftertaste of the liquor. 

Yet he could not stifle a resulting giggle at the sound, his cheeks aflame. 

Cuthalion smirked, bared his teeth. Though his tolerance had increased remarkably, Echoriath was never one to entirely hold his drink. If his memory of their seaside escapades served him well - and it had – in such a state of inebriation, his brother was somewhat overwhelmed by lust, by the need for sensation, for stimulation. Only sodden did Echoriath entirely quit his reasonable, restrained ways and evidence his fleshly cares. Though Tathren was probably by now collapsed on a waybed, snoring fitfully in his parents’ home and therefore incapable of tending to his beloved’s itching desires, in his twin’s present state Cuthalion could effortlessly extricate the most salacious of anecdotes from him, which regularly Echoriath would rather have his teeth plucked out by a warg tail than divulge. His intent was not to injure or embarrass him – he would never treat his own brother so basely – merely to glean some knowledge of his private relations in order to deepen their own intimacy. He loved his brother, wanted to be assured of his proper treatment… as well as, in all honesty, to gather fuel for later taunting sessions. 

He may be wicked, but ever with heart. 

Replenishing his own goblet with the sour elixir, he met Echoriath’s amber eyes across the thin, rectangular table between them. His brother laughed, once, then smiled with unctuous fondness, imparting how glad he was to be with him again, of their togetherness. His face was flush, his cheeks ruddy, buoyant, as he nuzzled his head against the bristly texture of the armrest. Already, the telltale signs of heightened sensitivity were upon him: he sunk his bare back entirely into the velour cushions of the chaise, his feet played with a silky blanket over the far edge, his tongue lapped at the rim of his cup and his fingers stroked over the velvet-clad length of his inner calf. Though his movements were sluggish, he’d grown restless, shifting every few moments to increase the friction on his back, his arms, like a cat on a scratching post. The wisps of his loose hair spilled over his chest to further torment him, though he had been the mastermind behind this misbegotten maneuver. Echoriath knew well enough Tathren was unreachable this night, though with every twitch and writhe he seemed of a mind to conjure him forth. 

Cuthalion peaked a wondering brow, which sent him blushing a spell. 

“Echo, will you indulge my curiosity awhile?” he inquired of his languorous brother. “On a matter of little importance, true, but yet I have always marveled…” 

“At what have you marveled?” Echoriath grinned impishly, his own interest roused by the impending question. 

“In all your time away,” Cuthalion elaborated. “With all the no doubt strapping swordbrothers you’ve encountered and gifted guildsmen you’ve brokered with, have you never once… desired another?” Though Echoriath was clearly shocked by the question, he nevertheless respected his brother enough to consider the matter, guessing immediately its underlying intention. “Not that you would act upon this desire… but have you never been at all curious to have knowledge of another’s body, another’s way of loving? Does it not… concern you… that you have only ever known one bed-partner?” 

The absent tenor of the darkling elf’s face told him his thoughts had instantly flickered off to Tathren, but Echoriath, conscious of his brother’s observation, wrenched his mind away from this luring image and set a steady course towards response. 

“I have not been fashioned as you, Talion,” he softly began. “I do not begrudge you knowledge of so many, these experiences are part of the search for your only one, and indeed my own beloved went through a similar search before he knew me as his own. I am not as you both… I am an aberration, in this as in many things… I am content to love with my one and him alone. I wish… I wish, at times, that we were truly twinned, that I might for a moment make you feel how fervently, how relentlessly I love him… but that is not to be.” 

“I also would like to share in your love, if for but an instant,” Cuthalion remarked somberly. “Perhaps then I might recognize the feeling in my own heart, when the time comes.” 

“Have you not courted any promising maidens, in my absence?” Echoriath asked gently, not wanting to inflict further melancholy upon him. 

Though the effects of his own intoxication veered him towards self-pity, Cuthalion rallied himself.

“I have snuffed my blaze through the maids of this land,” he explained. “I had a constant lover in the last few years, but over the winter she came to try my patience with her incessant talk of binding. I knew then she was not precious enough to forever keep and cut her free, though I do miss how she warmed me. I… I do not like a cold bed for long. I must take another lover soon.” 

“Perhaps a period of abstinence might be beneficial,” Echoriath suggested, a twinge of mirth overcoming him. Cuthalion abstinent was like a horse without hooves. “Or you might make another bold attempt at bedding an ellon…” 

With a snort, Cuthalion eyed him contemptuously. “Tis your tongue that has grown bold, through the companionship of such salty journeyers.” 

“My tongue is quite bold, indeed,” Echoriath grinned wolfishly. “It relishes the salt of plunder, the cream of suck, and the excavation of musky… *sacred* passages.” To Cuthalion’s further astonishment, his brother mewled in frustration. “Valar, the wine has roused me! I want my lover…” Resigned to the present, if fondly-held, company, Echoriath engaged him further. “But I have not yet sufficiently replied to your rather mischievous and ill-portending inquiry. While you are right in judging me dedicated to my beloved and our forever bond, I cannot pretend that others are not… intriguing, at times. I have come to know more elves in these last years than all I have known throughout my admittedly short life, so naturally I found more than a few fair.”

“Such as?” Cuthalion pursued. 

“I spent a three-month in the mines,” Echoriath related ponderously. “To lay the track and construct rest stations at various levels. At times the work was so arduous that we could not break for home, so we would stay the night and rest when we could. Tathren had no love for these absences, but he could be of no help to us and was occupied at the docks unloading ships. Oftentimes, I would be quite lonely. I found the miners rough. Some were stout-hearted, like Gimli, but others… they were not like elves at all. One such as this, however, was… very beautiful. Dark, like the little ones, black eyes and blackest hair. Mayhap black of heart, as well. I despised his manner, verily I did, and would never have come to love him, but on some of those lonely nights… he was innocent in slumber, as we all are. He was devastating…” 

“Did you… find pleasure in his comeliness?” Talion asked, unable to stifle a guffaw. 

“Nay, never!!” Echoriath protested. “He was pleasing to the *eye*, gwanur. Not every thing of beauty shoots straight to the loins.” 

“Indeed,” his brother sniffed pointedly. “But was there perhaps one who *did*?” 

Echoriath harrumphed with Elrondian bluster, but did not oppose him. 

“His name is of no consequence,” he charged. His lips curled giddily; he was, despite himself, proud to be proven an elf of various wants, if only one supreme need. “He was a simple elf, a cultivator of farmlands, a master harvester… a grower. We sowed the first fields together, planted the orchards and tended the vineyards, before the others came. He was flaxen-haired, as Tathren, and there were instances when his manner so reminded me of him that I could not rightly tell one from the other. Which confused me some… greatly, at times. The land work kept him hardy, but lean. We would swim together, after the noontime meal. I came to… appreciate his form. His bashful charms, so like my own. If I had not had Tathren, I would… we would, perhaps, have… But he was no temptation! I would never… but Tathren, by Elbereth, would not be dissuaded. He came to swim with us one afternoon, and afterwards was so ferociously jealous that I thought he might do something rash. The elf had his own longtime lover, in Valimar. A maid. There was never…” 

“Did he strike him?” Talion asked excitedly. 

Echoriath laughed at this, then assured him: “Nay, nay… but he forbid me to work in the orchards for a time.” 

“And you complied?” the silver elf queried disbelievingly. 

“For a time,” Echoriath responded enigmatically. “In truth, I found his jealously somewhat… useful. I encouraged it awhile. He would take me with such force afterwards, bleating troths, plied to my every wish, so skillfully as to utterly sunder me, that I… I could not resist…” Talion howled at the baldness of this revelation, such that he’d never thought would slip from between his prim brother’s lips. “But even that instance does not compare to the unforeseeable solicitations of other, covetous elves. While I did nothing to encourage these suitors… they did always somehow come to suffer for the benefit of my amusement. Tathren is rather cunning, in his own hotheaded fashion.”

“Do tell,” Cuthalion prodded, entirely embroiled in this unwieldy, improbable discussion. 

Echoriath gathered his legs in and propped himself up against the armrest, eager to amuse him with proof of his beloved’s devotion. 

“There exists, in the southernmost peaks of the echoriath,” he dove into the tale. “A tributary of a fearsome river that snakes up the eastern seaboard. From a shelf in the uppermost heights of an oceanfront mount, a waterfall pours through a gate of jagged rocks and over a cliff of extreme elevation, one only the most agile among our people might survive, but certainly not without severe injury. This shelf has little greenery, the rock sheet heated like coals beneath the fierce, unguarded sun. The cove from which the river spurts forth, however, is quite humid, cushioned with rare breeds of moss and lichen.”

“Enough with geography,” Cuthalion groaned, impatient in his inebriation. “Tell of the incident.” 

“I must set the scene,” Echoriath insisted, but proceeded nevertheless to the meat of the tale. “Weary elves would often climb to this shelf on days of rest to ease themselves, the routine of hothouse languor, an invigorating swim in the river’s breakneck gush, then a stretch beneath the sun was compellingly restorative. None bothered to bring their raiment beyond the entrance cave, as none would be necessary with the sun to bake them dry. Open nudity was common enough in the early, frontier days of the colony, and later the shelf became known as a place where exposure was not only accepted, but expected. After the completion of the first guildhall, a sixmonth following the arrival of the premier wave of workers, Tathren and I were lounging on the open rock. A few small parties of companions were in the vicinity, but most kept to their own circle, as all wanted to rest, to renew themselves. The previous week had been brutal for my beloved, hauling timber from the supply ships and lugging wagons full into the town. The instant out of the river, he had crawled to our usual spot, collapsed onto his stomach, and burrowed his head in his arms, falling dead asleep. I, myself, was laid out beside him, enjoying a time of reflection but far from fatigued.” 

“*You*, Echo, were bare within the sight of others?” Cuthalion marveled, after spitting up some of his drink. 

“Aye, Talion, that is the point of the tale,” Echoriath sighed, somewhat aggrieved that even his own twin could not intuit the forces that had molded him into an intrepid, audacious version of his former self. “An elf of our acquaintance, a seafarer and one of the new arrivals, perceived that I was not lost to slumber and came over to converse. He ostensibly wanted to learn more of our plans, as he had the option to remain for a time and sample the atmosphere, but as our light discussion progressed, I could rarely catch his eye, so focused was he on… on one of my more generous endowments.” 

“Your elfhood?!” Cuthalion gasped, then snickered plainly. 

“Elfhood, indeed,” Echoriath acknowledged. “Twas as if he’d never before seen an ellon, though I imagine he had had occasion to regard himself.” 

“Was he himself becoming?” his brother queried. 

“Not to my taste,” Echo admitted pensively. “He had no grace, no… delicacy. T’would not have surprised me if he’d declared himself a peredhil, for he was of manly countenance: coarse haired, brown, and rugged. And transfixed, it seemed, by my own slender form. He veered our talk towards the carnal in order to remark upon my… my length and his appreciation of it. He made advances. I rebuked him, but I was not about to skitter off into the cave and hide myself. If he could not conduct himself with the appropriate respect for his fellow elves, then he would suffer the consequences of his brusqueness.”

“And did he?” Cuthalion asked, almost savoring the inevitable conclusion. 

Echoriath laughed dryly, then finished: “He was veritably purple with anger!! Unbeknownst to me, in my flustered state, Tathren had both awoken and slipped quietly away. His absence was what provoked the elf to outright overture, though I was so stunned by his conversation that I had not even marked our cousin’s retreat. No sooner had I stood and spoke curtly to alert others of my predicament, than Tathren whistled from the cliffside for our attention and summarily dumped the elf’s effects into the ocean! In solidarity, the other elves decided to take leave with us, so the brute had to trudge the steep and dusty road back to the town with nothing but his burly navel hairs to conceal him.”

At this, Cuthalion was seized by such a fit of cackling that he nearly toppled off his own chair.

“His immodesty had him rightly banished,” Echoriath completed the tale. “Though a certain member of the security council may have had an overgenerous amount of sway on his fellow swordbrothers.” 

“I wager none dared even engage you in polite flirtation from that day on,” Cuthalion stuttered out, between peals of mirth. 

“I would have hoped,” he continued. “But there were, unfortunately, several more incidents… most strangely involving the river, now that I take their toll…”

“*Saes*, Echo, tell another before we retire,” Talion urged him, with the whine and pout of an elfling. “My dreams will be merry.” 

“Very well,” Echoriath conceded, though it was no real trouble to him. He enjoyed entertaining his brother with such tales, as he’d never before had tales to engage him, while Cuthalion had always been bursting with intrigues and seductions. He considered which of his stories had the most sauce, to further beguile his bed-hopping twin, then selected an incident that he was sure would make he himself blush, before long. “At this later time, the guildhalls were all nearing completion. Our heaviest flush of builders, wood craftsmen, and stone-workers were settled in tent compounds around the eight main edifices; some would remain to ply their artistic wares, most would depart for other colonies within the year. By day, we constructed. By night, we reveled. My three apprentices and I oversaw the process from the digging of the foundation to the polishing of the stone pillars. An influx of immigrants had recently arrived, representatives of each of the eight trade guilds hand-picked to decorate the individual halls with their art. The House of the Golden Flower, Ada-Fin’s own house, was the jewel of my designs. I gave his hall the greatest share of my attention, not a detail was overlooked. I selected the art of weaving for its guild, as Ada has always admired great tapestries, cloth textures, and fashionable raiment. On Glinfalas’ recommendation, a loom-master from Otirion was commissioned, his Naneth’s own instructor in the weaving arts.” 

“Hardly of infallible reputation,” Cuthalion noted. 

“His tapestries are exquisite,” Echoriath proceeded undeterred. “His carnal appetites, however, lack some… discretion. He is of a sect of elders that have never left Aman. Even in this more evolved age, they purposefully remain married to some *very* ancient, primitive customs: they practice communal binding. The nine members of a sect are bound together over three days of zealous festivities: blood rites, spellcasting, and… and…” 

Cuthalion visibly blanched at his unspoken insinuation: “They… they… You lie!”

“Nay, Talion,” Echoriath vigorously shook his head, as if to brush off an unwanted touch. “They couple… as a whole. Any children begotten from their union… unions?… are sold out as concubines to members of other sects. I was shocked to discover that Glinfalas himself is one of those children. He escaped the sect just before his first majority and set out on his own. Thorontir fostered him into full elfhood, trained him as a warrior. Yet over the ages he has rekindled a relationship with his mother, misguided as her beliefs are, and he knew the tapestries to be the finest in all Aman, so…” 

“Does he follow the… the rites of the sect?” Cuthalion gaped. “Was he the one that…?” 

“To speak of abstinence,” Echoriath mused, thinking of the woes his friend has suffered. “He is so cold, Talion, because he believes that any connection with another might evoke some deep-seeded perversion he fears lie within him still. Until this latest journey, he had gone untouched by ellon or ellyth for over five thousand years. This incident, however, broke him, and all was revealed.” He watched the colors of sympathy play over his darkling brother’s face, shaded as it was with the knowledge that he himself might have suffered a similar fate, if Tathren had refused him. After some dark moments, his brow evened and his countenance lightened anew. “Yet lately he has been hotly wooed by a maidenly lute-player. She is somewhat innocent of the world herself, only a decade our elder, but perhaps… perhaps they can come to some understanding.” 

“And the incident in question?” Cuthalion emphasized, hoping to rouse his brother back to jesting. 

“Aye, the incident,” Echoriath turned jovial again. “The night we completed the House of the Golden Flower, one of the tradesmen had brought fireworks. Nearly the entire population was gathered in the recently completed gardens that surround our glorious fountain to watch them. The Golden Flower guild is one of the three that border on the gardens. This information may seem trivial, but it will have its part in the action. As our entire settlement was out of doors, Tathren and I could not yet quit the House itself. A tapestry of Ada-Fin in his battle with the Balrog had been erected in the main hall that afternoon, the finishing touch, and I could not verily wrench my eyes from it. Tathren had come to collect me for the fireworks, but sensing I was in no mood for revels, decided that we should remain awhile. We spoke of Ada, of his eventual reaction to my reconstruction of his beloved city – which I yet feared would be scathing – and of how the town was taking shape. We were gathered on a luxurious rug before the hollow hearth… it was not long before I sought the solace of my lover’s care. Wanting to dispel all traces of sorrow from my being, Tathren was rather inspired in that night’s loving, such that the hall soon echoed with… with my moans.”

“A sound I am well acquainted with,” Talion needled him. “I assure you, gwanur-nin.”

With a fearsome blush, Echoriath pressed on: “We heard the pop of the fireworks in the distance; we did not fear discovery. Save that a certain lecherous, sect-worshipping elf had come in to admire his handiwork… and stayed to admire *us*. We’d not bothered to unclothe entirely, but my breeches had been discarded and my shirt flayed open. Tathren sensed him instantly, and glared such that he wafted into the shadow. He had thought him gone, but found him again later, at another place in the hall, and growled at him. I myself took no note of him, nor did I find my lover’s growl… unusual, so I remained oblivious and embroiled in our passion. Just as we were soaring to our final, sundering release, the elf emerged again, from beside the hearth itself, and stood directly over us as we… we…” 

“Came to completion?” Talion essayed smartly. 

“Aye,” Echoriath demurred, his cheeks ruddy as a cobapple. “Tathren sunk into my arms. We were in our fugue for some time, as is customary, but when I opened my eyes a few moments later, the stupid elf had lingered there. He smiled at me – a wretched, wolfish grin – with no shame at all! He wanted me to know the force of his admiration, the… the thrall of his lusting. To no one’s surprise, I started, and Tathren turned swiftly around. When he marked the elf’s proximity, his black, beady eyes, he leapt to his feet, fastened his breeches as he chased after him, and apprehended him just by the exit. The elf thought Tathren would yank him back in, but my beloved had other plans. By this time, Tathren was bare chested and loose-breeched, so he threw the elf over his shoulder, marched him to the fountain before a community of eyes agape, tossed him into the spray, and told him – before an audience of avid ears – to cool off before he took his trade elsewhere.”

Cuthalion nearly choked himself with laughter at this spirited recounting; he could very well picture Tathren, handsomely shirtless and flush from carnal exertion, strutting back into the Hall like Legolas from an orc den, imposing, glorious in his ready dispatch of the enemy, Mirkwood blood roaring through his veins. He shared this vision with his now drowsy brother, who sighed dreamily at the image. Despite their night-stretch conversation of jealousies and of infatuations, there was but one who ever held his tender heart. 

One whom, Cuthalion esteemed, would sorely regret the lost chance to ply the wine-laved, lassive elf before him to his impassioned will, when later taunted by the information that had been gleaned from him. Grappling to an unruly stance, the silver elf offered a swaying hand to his brother, who nodded sweetly – three winks from sleep – but did not stir. Instead, Talion stretched the feet-twined blanket over him and slipped out the goblet from his drooping hold. 

He kissed his long-missed twin on the brow, before lurching off to his own bedchamber; glad to know some of his intimacies, at last. 

 

End of Part Thirteen


	14. Part 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The family celebrates the return of its boldest young elves, mysteries are solved.

Part Fourteen

Tathren woke, on this seventh day of midsummer, in a thatch of elflings. 

The airy susurrations of their snortles and breaths harmonized with the gushes of late morning storm against the outer face of his talan, as whips of breeze snaked between the latched windows to puff the silky curtains. The day beyond shimmered a burnished silver through their diaphanous spill, not quite the maudlin gray of fall, not quite the sterling blue of a spring shower. Their morning swim would be preempted by the rain, though the thirsting forest would drink its fill and relish the humid atmosphere that would reign until sunset. 

With a low, treacle-throated sigh, Tathren himself basked in the dusky, twilight scents that wafted about their bedchamber; a fragrant bushel of crisp, misty northern pines mingled in a rich musk with notes of heather, clove, and thistle down, his somnambulant brothers largely overwhelming the rousing smell of his beloved. In the wake of the overnight thunderstorm, Ciryon was yet burrowed in Echo’s vigilant embrace, with Brithor entrenched between the buttressing bodies of his elders. Rohrith, true to form, was sprawled across Tathren’s chest as if lounging on a beach, no lightening clash enough to curl him in for unwarranted comfort. The golden elf twined doting fingers into the spray of ebony hair, stealing a few moments of reverence before his sprightly ones awakened. 

In the four months since their return to Telperion, he had grown patiently acquainted with the subtle differences between the wilding three. While at first their similarities wholly impressed, with time, their distinct natures had revealed themselves. Ciryon was a kindred spirit to his own adorably bashful Echoriath, introspective, timid, but voraciously curious once engaged. Indeed, Cuthalion often teased that Echo had acquired a true twin at last, as Ciryon shadowed him constantly, never intruding but always eager to understand the activity being undertaken. Echoriath, thankfully, did not mind in the least; he already spoke of what a keen apprentice his cousin would one day prove himself. Rohrith, by contrast, leapt before even the briefest glimpse of a look could be attempted. Of a more voluble tone, but no less enthusiastic than his modest twin, his eagerness to challenge himself was palpable. His tiny frame often quaked with the need to sprint, chase, or battle. Yet his imagination was no less bountiful. He could often be found with a stick-sword, bating unseen foes to quicken their demise, and with undaunted mettle he routinely spurred his brothers off to calamitous adventure. Brithor was the centering force that drew in these two polarities. A more amiable infant or grown elf Tathren had never known. Whatever talent he possessed had not yet distinguished itself; his chief characteristic was the ability to love, well and without condition. He forgave so easily his elders often wondered if he ever indeed felt any injury, always ready to offer a kiss, a smile, a hug, or any other affection that might help another endure. Tathren adored each of his darkling brothers, but Brithor was his pet, as happy to nest in the crook of his arm - though not shy of others as Ciryon - as to amble alongside him for miles of road – though not distracted by every skittering squirrel as Rohrith. Brithor enjoyed the company he kept, whether occupied in adventure or in quietude. The storm, however, had unnerved the elfling; he’d required the presence of both elders to succor him and was thus tucked snugly between them. 

After but this brief quarter year of their togetherness, Tathren could not conceive of a life without his gamely brothers, nor the twinkly charms of his sister, even though his visitations with her were far less frequent. Twas he who proposed to give his fathers a few days respite from the constant charge of their brood by having the triplets over, though he had been surprised at their initial reluctance. Indeed, both his Adar had come to quit from them the day before, a rare occurrence of two accomplishing a task for one and just over the glade, at that. Though they would only keep the elflings for a handful of days, both fathers had gathered up their brood as if undertaking a two-month’s journey. Elrohir’s usually serene visage had been particularly shroud; though, once he’d pried himself away, the quicksilver eyes he turned on his husband and the sultry touch he’d skimmed along his back told of his ultimate gladness of this private time between them. With a sly wink to his Echo, he’d watched them meander through the high grass of the glade, their figures already molded into one loving whole. 

He wondered if, on this drowsy morn, they even begrudged the rain.

While his fathers could spend the day away suckling each other, there were more urgent matters to which he himself must, unfortunately, eventually, attend. The storm would perhaps delay the ongoing negotiations between representatives of the Laurelin colonists and the Telperion council until early afternoon, but they could not be forgone entirely. Echoriath had presented his designs to the Sindar officials just days before, the explication of his plans would occupy them for some time, then, after a brief pause for the Laurelins to peruse the documents, he would be required to answer their no doubt ample queries as to schedule, expense, necessity, and alternatives. Tathren, as the designated liaison between the two peoples, must attend all meetings, though with the advent of his two Thranduillion uncles, this was no hardship. Luinaelin, the more familiar to him, had just a month before landed in from Arda. Legolas’ middle brother had no love for the northlands, so he sought to further his interests in a lordship of a colony here. Mithbrethil was the negotiator sent by Thranduil from Laurelin proper, as there was question both of some colonists’ eventual return and of the adequacy of the north settlement when they chose to do so. He had escorted the beatific Laurelith, who was not yet acquainted with her newly granddaughter. 

Tathren had found himself in great demand these last weeks, what with bold uncles, doting grandmothers, and the quarrelsome Laurelins to appease. Though his Ada-Las would not entirely quit his brothers’ company during his restful time, Tathren was expected to be ever available to them and indeed was quite engaged by their familiar company. These were not the sage, self-contained elders of Imladris, but elves whose blood yet rushed with pure mercury, undiluted by position, notions of propriety, or ages passed. An eve in the ale hall with the former princes of Mirkwood was not to be missed, even the rubes of the frontier could not match them for wiles. When the defense of their people came into play, however, no amount of familiarity nor familial due swayed them; the pair was even more shrewd, sharp, and demanding of their efforts than the colonists themselves. Yet unlike the colonists, Mithbrethil and Luinaelin trusted their nephew’s honesty and goodwill, which had in a few short weeks pushed them ever closer to breaking ground. Construction could not adequately begin before the blanket of winter covered the vale, but Tathren had no doubt they would nevertheless be resolved to that commonly desired course. 

In but a cycle of the moon, he would be tasked for the coming years, richened by the close residency of a Sindar uncle, blessed with a beauteous charge of siblings, and bound to his most beloved one. By Elbereth’s grace, his eternity was proving fine. 

Once his Adar’s rejuvenation was complete and his uncles satisfied, he and Echo would escape to the seaside, to celebrate the ninth anniversary of their togetherness. Though present preoccupations did not tax his spirit, on this cozy morn he allowed anticipation to well up within him. In the first day of their tenth year, they would be bound. Their fathers had not yet consulted in depth as to the outplaying of the occasion, but they had resolved to the date. The year would shoot by like a hare past a fox den, but by Tathren’s estimation the time could not progress with swiftness enough, such did he long to be one with his forever mate. The shock of love that prompted the very pulse of his heart. His Echo. 

He shifted in their cocoon of sheets to better regard his one in sweetly slumber, but instead an owlish pair of onyx eyes caught his own. Tathren poked his tongue out to bait his ponderous brother; a pink bud broke between petal lips in return, then a soft giggle trilled. 

“Echo *me* melef dis day, Tafren,” Ciryon taunted, though could not help but blush at his own jest. 

“Indeed,” Tathren replied, with fake desolation. “Then who will love me, gwanur?” 

“Brifor,” came the mirth-ripe retort. 

“We are brothers!” he hushly protested. “Though I love all my pyn-neth dearly, we cannot love as melethryn do.” 

“You love Echo… as Ada-Hir love Ada-Las?” Ciryon questioned him, knowing well the truth of this statement, but perhaps searching for affirmation of his understanding of elven relations. 

As their circle of acquaintances had considerably expanded, the triplets had struggled, of late, to mark the distinctions between filial and romantic bonds. Where their elders were concerned, clarity reigned, but those of their nearby generation gave them trouble, no less when the matter of cousins who loved came into question. Ciryon was the scientist of the three, ever testing hypotheses and formulating theories based on observation of the world around him; yet another trait that branded him of Echo’s line by more than blood. 

“Aye, I love him thusly,” Tathren acknowledged. “We will soon be bound, and may perhaps in centuries to come have elflings of our own.” Ciryon’s eyes widened considerably, then narrowed pensively to fit this information into the pattern he had formed. “Have I not shown you our rings?” 

Mindful of Rohrith, Tathren tugged out the chain that never left his neck, which hung with the delicate mithril ring that signified their betrothal. Equally bedazzled by the jewel and awed by its import, Ciryon’s face grew contrite. 

“Fogive, saes, Tafren,” he whispered, abashed. “Me no have Echo as melef.”

“Nay, he cannot be your meleth,” Tathren reassured him. “But he loves you dearly, as do I.” At this, Echoriath’s arms tightened around the darling little elf, whose face shone once again with cheer. “In fact, you have hit upon a matter of pressing concern, Cir-neth. During the rites of binding, an elf requires a brother to stand by his side. Cuthalion has long ago agreed to stand with Echo, but I had not thought to have a brother with me, as I before had none. But now… I have three!” 

“Me stand, Tafren!!” Rohrith’s muffled cry reverberated against his chest. 

“Tafren, *me* stand!!” Brithor chirped from between them, face raised up insistently. 

“Tafren-gwanur ask to *me* stand,” Ciryon muttered, afraid his twins’ gusto had already won the day. 

“I would have all three of you stand with me, pen-gwenin,” Tathren chuckled fondly, as Echoriath ruefully shook his head. “I only wished to inquire after your participation.” 

In unanimous response, the raucous three charged him. Caught in a mire of tiny clutches and of squishy kisses, Tathren finally found himself ready to greet the dawn.

* * * 

Legolas rumbled out an unctuous purr, then stretched across the slick, sweaty plain of his lover’s chest as a flesh-glutted predator on the midday veldt. He traced a salacious tongue across his own lips, his incisors keen, the salty tang of mingled seeds still tantalizingly sharp. He was lulled into a dreamy quiescence by the lazy, flattering fingers that pet his golden mane, sweeping soothingly from unruly crown to the small of his elegant, sinuous back. The air was yet pregnant with moisture from the morning rain, the cloud of humidity around them pungent with the musky scent of their recent, rabid coupling. 

A teapot and two fat-bellied cups had been cast aside, when their hours of by turns ecstatic and intent conversation had been for a time so saturated by feeling that they could naught but express these dizzying emotions by the carnal embrace of their bodies. Beneath the most secluded willow of their thicket, they’d flirted and fondled, caressed and leisurely undressed, each luxurious sweep of skin revealed to eyes hooded with lust, with adoration. Amidst the downy high grass, Legolas had savored every nip, lick, or lave of his elf-knight’s sensuous self. Whether nosing the sheer column of his neck, nibbling at a pert nipple, or suckling his wrought shaft, Legolas had found ample meat upon which to sate his roaring hunger, the culmination of his own forge-iron erection had come in the profound, slow-burn penetration of his mate’s singeing core. 

Elrohir had thrashed wildly in his throes, so crude-tongued in his ardently vocal appreciation that Legolas had feared the security patrol might be summoned. Today, his cries did not need be stifled by a probing thumb lest sleeping elflings’ ears be pricked; he could scream his love through the forest haunts with a delicious vulgarity, in thrall he had verily relished this liberty. Their counterpoint debating and their uproarious opinions, in vital addition to their breathless passion pledges, had roused Elrohir to rare fever. Unlike the hasty, needful couplings of the last few years, he’d insisted upon extravagant amount of foreplay before his most visceral taking; Legolas had been inspired by the rawness of his need and had met these demands with naughty panache. With each release upon thunderous release that had seized them, fatigue had languidly descended, until they knew their nighttime efforts would be marred if they did not take some rest and a hearty meal’s refreshment. 

An hour of sun haze remained them, however, so Legolas had crawled over his love drunk husband and sunk down into the pillow-plumpness of his muscular frame. Elrohir, said frame having been peerlessly worshipped for some time now, was more than glad to berth his beloved and stroke him into a dulcet reverie, as he plotted his own after-dinner strike on the unsuspecting archer. 

Though the concept of a brief absence from their little ones had been most unwelcome on first utterance, Legolas now thought the notion so beneficial to he and his spouse that he would, at the end of their private time, suggest another such indulgence the following year, amidst the epicenter of planning their son’s binding. He had not, until this very moment, acknowledged how their fervent dedication to parenthood had stolen perhaps a too ample share of their intimate time. Since the blessed event of Tinuviel’s birth, Nenuial had not been able to host their triplets for even a night’s togetherness. This was no bother - he loved all his precious sons and would have them home every night – but their elflinghood, though treasured, did not lend itself to the ardent coupling of parents. Tathren’s rearing in Imladris had been a different affair, as there had been many in residence to occupy even their mercurial goldenrod while his fathers sneaked away for an afternoon. More often than not, their duties had indeed called them away; little wonder Tathren was an adventurer after his vagabond and nomadic childhood. With these precocious three, however, both fathers had retreated some from their responsibilities to devote themselves to full time rearing, yet another way in which Tathren and Echoriath’s return had aided them. Though his bond with his elf-knight was such that no amount of abstinence would truly affect them – the time of their lust-fever had been proof enough of that – Legolas nevertheless vowed, in the future, not to wane in its nourishment, through the occasional trysting afternoon with his star-kissed mate. 

He sensed a listlessness sag Elrohir’s hold, his petting hand tucked around him. His eyelids drooped into a delicate landing, a rapturous sigh escaped his lips. He slept; ethereal in slumber as the silmaril itself against the black cast of the midnight sky. Legolas carefully slipped out of his embrace, then shifted aside to gather his gentle husband against him in the fashion he’d been held. Elrohir had energy enough to curl in, then went contentedly limp in the cradle of his arms. 

Legolas took a chance to admire the lush, regal beauty the Valar had thought to award him, such comeliness the only proper conduit for such a glorious, gallant heart. He let the swell of love wash over him, let it drench him, fill the core of him with a blaze, as his Elrohir would that very night. The feeling, though matured through the centuries, had blessed every moment of his life from his earliest memories; not a day had passed without knowledge of this one who awaited, then later attended him. Whether a spark lurking amidst the very flow of his blood or a flush body fused to his form, Elrohir had always been a part of him. 

For this, he knew himself both of highest privilege and of rare fortune, as evidenced by the troubled life his own eldest brother had long suffered through. 

Mithbrethil’s return to the vale, along with Luinaelin’s provenance, had heralded a gentler age between the three brothers. Their solidarity was no longer necessitated by strife, but by mutual admiration and well-earned respect. They had come to enjoy each other again, whether carousing in the ale hall, debating issues of government, or exercising on the archery fields. The very boar that flavored the stew he and Elrohir would soon feast upon had been caught that morn, when his brothers had come to fetch him for quick hunt about the hinterlands. Twas during the skinning of carcasses that Mithbrethil had confessed himself, provoked as he was by their accidentally acute jesting and the events that occasioned for him on the previous eve. 

To be just, Legolas had also been astounded by Luinaelin’s momentous, unexpected arrival on their shores a month earlier. His brother had not even been a-courting during the years after the War of the Ring, so devoted was he to the settlement of their people in Ithilien and its governance. Yet he had descended the ship with a beauteous mate – of peredhil heritage no less, half Ithilien, half of the principality of Dol Amroth – and two children, with a third’s imminent advent thrilling to parents, son, and daughter alike. Upon sight of this resplendent brood of Luinaelin’s, added to the recent introduction to his own sparkling Tinuviel, Legolas had first remarked the shadow that suddenly shroud his brother’s noble, aquiline face. 

A subsequent discussion with Elrohir had focused his thoughts on the matter. As crown prince of Mirkwood, the pressure to marry well was immense, of an overwhelming intensity for one so dedicated to proper and righteous behavior as Mithbrethil. Little wonder that neither of his brothers had even turned their thoughts to mating until after the War’s end. Legolas did not doubt that he would have chosen similarly, if not for Thranduil’s lucky bargaining with Elrond and the untimely passing of two beloved wives. The thought had haunted him for several days, as well as another saddening notion. While Luinaelin had evidently evolved enough to find his bliss, the archer had never known Mithbrethil, who was an entire millennia his senior, to have had more than the most fleeting and superfluous dalliance with another. He could not even be said to have had a lover, let alone a longtime companion; his duties to Mirkwood were always foremost in his concern. They occupied the stoic, often testy elf to distraction – only in the company of fellow soldiers, in questing or on guard, had Legolas seen him truly relaxed; this only after a major action, when the enemy had been slaughtered into oblivion and security was assured. His time in Laurelin had apparently not proved any more fruitful, nor had Mithbrethil, on his last visit, seemed inclined to alter the situation. He had, apparently, resigned himself to eternal solitude; though by his grave visage at witnessing Luinaelin’s newfound joy, his millennia of loneliness had eviscerated any hope of resolve. 

Yet this elf was of softer character than the imposing elder brother that had once so intimidated him. Their naneth’s return from Mandos had gentled him towards his brothers, the hurdles of an eternal life, even Thranduil himself. When their king had declared he would return to govern Laurelin, he wagered Mithbrethil’s relief was palpable; though of most valiant character, the crown had never sat well upon him. The brother he remembered loved nothing more than the thought of building a talan, trenching a well, damming a river to produce an essential tributary. In this, Mithbrethil secretly coveted Echoriath’s teaching, which had no doubt caused Thranduil to send him as delegate to their negotiations. Their father seemed more inclined, on this new frontier, to indulge his son’s passion for such things; perhaps they had finally come to a new level of understanding, though Legolas was loathe to accord Thranduil any compliments in any regard. 

By Mithbrethil’s telling that morn, his own tenacity and stubbornness had forced their father’s hand. *This* was the brother he remembered fondly well: strident, demanding, grind-nosed, honorable… but alone despite the subtle replenishing of his inner stores. 

Before Legolas had dared to suggest - not a remedy, but perhaps some ideas of how to expand his circle of acquaintances – Mithbrethil had admitted that there was one that, after so many frigid years, had affected him. Indeed, she had begun by infuriating him as no other creature in Arda or Aman. One of the few female Galadhren, the ellyth in question from her first step onto Laurelin soil had objected to his every move. In the time before their naneth’s release, he had, off Rumil’s advisement, named her to the guard, only to revoke her commission but two years later, as she countermanded nearly every order he gave. As a builder, she was quarrelsome; as a tree-shearer, too finicky. She had no head for government nor council, as she argued from her heart and took even the most offhand taunt as a challenge. She had proved an able instructor to the younglings, until several of the fathers demanded proof of her skill, at which contest she bested them all and caused a veritable riot. Mithbrethil had had no choice but to command her along with the colonists, though she had protested this with such vehemence she had accidentally broke his arm in three places, when their will-battle had eventually come to blows. 

Naturally, Legolas soon intuited that his brother was sickly in love with her, though he had wondered if Mithbrethil himself had acknowledged this. 

Indeed, Legolas and Elrohir both knew her well. Perhaps chastened by Mithbrethil’s injury, which had convinced her to sail for Telperion, she had been naught but a brave, goodly force in the vale. She had worked tirelessly, in those first, fractious nights, to set up camp and ensure her people were well fed. She had carried child after child to the homes in which they would foster for the first week, her consoling, rallying words of infinite comfort to them. Even one as meticulous as Erestor wanted her for an archery instructor and a dormitory mistress in the school he was planning. She was perhaps not made for the brash Laurelin frontier, where males overwhelmed the populace and ignorant ones at that, but she was more than worthy of considerable regard, romantic or naught. 

Though Legolas had not know at the time, Mithbrethil had encountered her again at a Telperion ale hall, just nights ago, though he well remembered the brawl their blunt words had ignited. He had not himself witnessed their initial argument, though she had many friends among the more flint-tempered element of their vale and they no doubt viciously defended her honor. Legolas had thought it strange that his brother had immediately fled the scene; he had assumed he’d been unexpectedly called away by their mother. A few days later, he and Elrohir had just exited a Council meeting, when they’d come upon Mithbrethil and an unidentifiable ellyth embracing furiously in Elrond’s small orchard (they had, of course, sought to do the same, but left well enough alone). 

He had never seen his brother so vulnerable as that very morn, when he confessed of his regard, his desire to court her, how they had somehow gone from sworn enemies to secret lovers in but three nights time. Mithbrethil was baffled by the emotions that even then nearly moved him to tears, that made his heart swell with anguish at the thought of taking leave of her and fired his loins to such blistering need he would seek her out that very afternoon. Twas then that Legolas had been struck dumb by realization, of such a damning fact that he almost despaired for his mule-headed, iron-hearted people. 

His brother did not know how to love. 

Legolas himself had never known ought but love, from an unknown force until Elrohir presented himself upon his majority. Mithbrethil had not experienced any form of love before - save the familial - not the infatuations that sprang from physical desire, not romantic yearnings, and certainly not the clarion knell of another’s soul. There had been no time to even imagine a future mate for himself, merely the proper alliance, the most beneficial match for his father’s kingdom. Every suggestion he or Luinaelin made to resolve the logistical problems of his brother’s situation was met with obstacles seemingly insurmountable to Mithbrethil himself; that he was terrified of these feelings as nothing ever before soon became glaringly apparent. Legolas could only pray that she was obstinate enough to so besiege his senses, he would have no choice but to give in to her. The process had already begun, if the crimson culls that streaked his lower neck were any indication. Legolas had advised him as well as he could, given that he had never truly fought himself in order to love Elrohir, and vowed his continued support. Luinaelin’s words had had a more powerful effect, as he himself had experienced a similar resistance to his mate’s initial wooing. 

Regardless of the outcome for his brother, Legolas had been reminded yet again of the priceless value of Elrohir’s love and how fortunate he was to have been so longly blessed by their bountiful union. He could only wish as much for Mithbrethil, wither with his current she-elf or with another intended. 

“What dark thoughts could so worry your brow, melethron?” Elrohir suddenly queried, argent eyes peering inquisitively upwards. “And after such blissful love-play?” 

“Do not think one furrowed brow has quenched my desire for you, my gifted one,” Legolas smirked, but reflection yet clouded his eyes. “I thought but on Mithbrethil’s plight. On the struggle ahead for him and… on my good fortune, in being taught to love by such as you, Elrohir-nin. I fear if we had not been promised, then Mirkwood might have bittered me beyond repair.”

“Do you judge your brother beyond repair, Legolas?” he asked, surprised and mildly disconcerted. 

“Nay, I judge him a stubborn elf,” Legolas amended. “His character was forged in Mirkwood, but is not ruled by it. His choice in lovers – or specifically to not longly indulge in one particular lover’s care – have led him here as much as my father’s ignoble demands of his crown prince. Yet the peak he seeks to conquer is high indeed, and perilous at that. I fear he will have to entirely refashion himself, if he is to be a doting mate to Aneandrel.”

“If he has lain with her, as you earlier said,” Elrohir considered. “He will not be able to part from her, no matter what his commitments are. Once an elven soul has commingled with the flame of its mate, greater forces overtake rational thought. Your brother is unused to such dominant emotion, feels shamed by his easy acquiescence. Yet he will soon enough adjust to how love overpowers one’s will. This was but the first night of his sundering; he is green. But he will not quit our vale for a two-month. After lying in her arms for such a time and finding his heart there… you may very well have both your brothers in close residence.” 

“Aye, that would hearten me,” Legolas agreed, a smile dawning on his fair features. “As have your words, melethron.” 

“Enough to lure you to our table, my beauty?” Elrohir grinned wolfishly at him, suddenly ravenous for supper, seduction, and succulent wood-elf. “To our bed?” 

“To table forthwith,” Legolas chuckled fondly. “I have not, as others, indulged in a late afternoon nap.” 

“My poor, beleaguered husband,” Elrohir cooed teasingly, but nevertheless lapped at his earlobe. “Come, child of Mirkwood. Let my love refashion *you* anew.” 

The elf-knight plucked a kiss from his bawdy lips, before grappling to his feet and offering his mate a hand. As they strolled towards their own homely house, bare, free, he locked arms with his twilight husband, with the one who had so roused his heart, so peerlessly kept it, who owned it all and very well. 

* * * 

Peals upon peals of giggles bubbling behind, they shot through the long grass fields west of Telperion like an arrow off their renown Ada-Las’ precision bow. They bounded, fleet-footed, through the splendorous meadow; Rohrith at the jutting tip of the fletch with Ciryon and Brithor at his flanks, swishing to and fro. The blunt sun of midsummer glared across the lawn, reflected off of flapping sheathes of otherwise sheer ebony hair. Fresh from the river and energized to distraction by their morning swim, the triplets gleefully raced ahead of their guardians, who lolled indulgently behind. 

Tathren and Echoriath were loathe to pick up their pace as they sauntered through the balmy glade, hands leisurely clasped and shoulders keeping close counsel. Though the inexhaustible three had insisted on bedding-down with them the last three nights of storm, the couple had funneled their excess emotion into these quiet, affectionate gestures, which heartened them both. As their togetherness was no longer a thinly veiled secret to the peoples of Telperion, in public they could now caress liberally, show evidence of their shared emotion, and occasionally overreact to the coveting of a beloved’s attentions, as any doting lover would. Though their timely destination was a forum on the leadership of the Laurelin colony - to which they would act as silent observers on behalf of the Lord of Telperion - Arien above was yet too bold for haste through such high blades, which folded elegantly back to part for them. 

No such courtesy was paid their sprightly threesome, whose raven manes swooped up above the stalks, every few gallops, to mark their progress forth. As they neared the collection of expansive tents that served as town hall, nursery, canteen, and healing station, the elflings fell into migrant formation and crowed their arrival to Thalarien, Luinaelin’s mate, who braided their daughter Lindoriel’s hair. The gangly young ellyth had already seen fifteen season cycles turn, but keeping the triplets, even for a few swift hours, would undoubtedly prove the making of her mettle. The trio circled furiously around them, sounded a squeaky war cry, then launched a full-on assault of ecstatic, cacophonous wrassling upon their unsuspecting cousin. Thalarien had barely released her daughter’s honey-hued braids in time, before the ellyth was toppled off her stool and tumbled into a pile of giddy elflings. 

The bemused naneth tisked audibly, but could not entirely banish a smile. 

“You did not rightly believe, my newly aunt,” Tathren teased, in lieu of greeting. “That her pristine tunic would survive the afternoon, did you?”

“Nay,” the knowing mother sighed. “Yet I had prayed for rain.” 

“In my recent experience,” Echoriath noted wryly. “Grass stains are much easier to expunge than berry jam. Perhaps the sun is a blessing to your stores of lye, if not your seamstress’ handiwork.” 

“Indeed,” she smirked, but regarded the merry bunch with terrible fondness. She foist kindly eyes upon their guardians, this pair of elflings she once knew now soon headed for the binding altar. Yet she could, after her own fashion, be just as caustic as they. “You two are brave, flaunting your romance before a pack of frothing Sindar nobles.” 

“I see no wolfhounds- er, *wood-elves* in our midst, at present,” Echoriath winked at her. “Regardless, in our dealings with either tribe, we intend to herald a time of peace, cooperation, commingling… passions run wild and voraciously amok.” 

“His tongue is emboldened by your care, nephew,” she repliqued, though her eyes shone with mirth. 

“So many have oft remarked, these lately months,” Tathren snarked dryly, but nipped a kiss from Echoriath’s temple. He waved vigorously to his brothers as they skipped away, with Lindoriel in tow, towards the lush boughs of the lonely oak amidst the scorched fields, to which six sturdy swings had been affixed. “They will not venture far, I trust?” 

“Lindoriel has never been past the stream,” she assured him. “She is a child of Arda. She knows only too well the consequences of straying too far away from our camp.” Tathren nodded, assuaged by this reasoning. “Aneandrel was late to rise, this morn, but she will be along shortly to mind them.” 

Several leagues beyond the oak, a faint streak of water sliced through the land. Even the gamesome triplets were grown enough not to sprint passed the boundaries of their realm, though their legendary enthusiasm was also known to wholly distract them from common sense. Yet Tathren feared more for the civility of his Sindar tribe, faced with such a fateful choice as theirs, this day. Indeed, their options were perhaps too plentiful to be borne without argument. First, whether to live as one people or to divide into sects – one bent on return to Laurelin, one wishing to establish roots here, east of Telperion. 

If such an essential split came to pass, how would the camps be separated, for whom would they build, what would the aims of either populace be, and, inherent to any such decision, to whom would they pledge allegiance and in what form of government? Luinaelin clearly represented the faction preferred by most elves of the late third and early fourth ages, the foundation of a Sindar village here in Telperion, under a benevolent lordship. Older mates of mostly absent frontiersmen from earlier ages preferred to return north after a time, to Laurelin, to their rebuilt homes, and ultimately to Thranduil’s kingship. Tathren held little hope that the colony would remain whole, though this eventuality was possessed of its own strange wisdom. Three potent questions yet preoccupied him: where would those loyal to Laurelin abide for the time being, would they allow Telperion builders – Noldor builders - to go north to aid them, and with which group would his uncle Mithbrethil align himself? 

For the first time since taking on his diplomatic charge, Tathren questioned his own ability to mediate such proceedings. Though he would not be called upon for a formal speech, the younger colonists – those hoping to found a new village - had come to trust his judgment, as blindly as the buffoons of the early Gondolen council had come to value Echoriath’s. They admired his esteemed heritage (child as he was of two of Arda’s three noble elven houses), his peredhil bloodline, his survival instincts, and his courage in journeying straits. Most of all, they admired the daring of his betrothal to a Noldor cousin, a son of Elrond’s own line. The legend of his foremother’s prophecy had spread like wildfire through their ranks; upon their return from establishing a veritable shrine – though a working, thriving one – to ancient Gondolin, the whispered rumors of their secret, Valar-blessed powers were loud enough to deafen an istar. In their reverent eyes, Tathren was a fallback to the heroes of the first age, a king in his learning years, *their* future king. If Luinaelin’s lordship was approved by their champion, then son of Thranduil or no, they would follow him until the time was right to welcome Illuvatar’s own intended for their rule. 

Tathren himself, though not entirely ignorant of this commotion among his peers, neither let his own choices be influenced by their at times disturbingly intense regard, nor approved of their mythologizing of his relationship with Echoriath, as their greatest achievements were yet before them. He longed but for an expedient and reasonable resolution, though he knew both factions were fired as though for a incipient battle. Such was the way of the mercurial Sindar. 

As his gaze drifted beyond the majestic oak - his low-hung boughs ripe with elflings – beyond the amber plain, beyond the sun-dappled stream to the far bank of foreign, lawless land, he spied, to his consternation, a riders’ camp, with barely enough canvass to shelter five elves. Had some of the more hotheaded Laurelins moved out of the bounds of Elrond’s protection? Were some of the elder males visiting from the frontier? Upon further inspection, the tents were of indistinct colors, as if their allegiance had been hastily and poorly painted over. Must they now contend with outlaws? Brigands? Brutal rebel factions? Insurgents? 

Echo, intuiting his grave concern, wove a steady arm around him. His eyes were alight, attempting to identify the riders lurking beyond. When he started, Tathren turned to read his pallid features; whatever disturbances he had gleaned from his otherworldly search writ large across his face. He sighed warily, undecided as to action, and drew close to his love. 

To Tathren’s unspoken question, he nevertheless replied: “I know not. Merely… they will not harm us, nor in body, nor in person. Yet there is a darkness… ominous, but not evil. I have not felt its like on the shores of Aman. I am reminded of-“ He wrenched around to spy the advent of his Adar. He squeezed Tathren’s forearms, to hearten him. “Your brothers will be well protected, fear not. Grandsire has sent reinforcements.” 

“Suilad, Echo, Tathren,” Glorfindel announced them, as Elladan hugged both warmly in turn. “I hope you have come well armed?” 

“Have you, uncle?” Tathren inquired, at once relieved and somewhat unmoored by the sudden appearance of the Balrog-slayer himself. 

“Aye, pen-neth,” the golden elf smirked, slapping his bond-son heartily on the back. “With the sagacity of the reborn and the charms of a hallowed one.” 

“Do not ply those charms too liberally, bereth,” Elladan chided good-naturedly. “Else you will be mightily chastened, come nightfall.” Sobering, he addressed the younger elves. “Ada sensed trouble brewing, but in what form he could not say. I have come to escort the little ones to the Lord’s House. Your grandmothers were rather riled that you did not request their services to begin with, but agreed that this time spent with their beloved grandsons would be remedy enough for your injury. That, and your presence at the evening meal.” 

“We had not thought to stray,” Echoriath commented, though Tathren’s manner had stiffened considerably. 

“I am glad you are here to keep them, Ada-Dan,” he generously thanked his uncle. “I wish only that I could accompany you.” 

“Ah, but history awaits us, Tathren,” Glorfindel winked at him, before ushering them towards the main tent. 

Three impish elflings were already racing towards their uncle; Tathren waved fondly to them, before letting Echoriath tug him along. 

*

As Glorfindel held the flap aloft, a haze of humid, angry air enveloped them. Under the raging noontime sun, the tent offered little respite from the hothead summertime heat, its canvass moist in places and its cool bamboo poles dripping with condensation. That the entire populace of the colony was packed beneath or that the sanctity of the proceedings did not lend to ventilation, seemed only to amplify their discomfort, which did not bode well for the clarity of judgments nor the ease of resolution. The elves were seated in circular form around a modest stage where some of Echoriath’s design models were displayed, two aisles bisecting their ranks. Mithbrethil and Luinaelin sat in the front row, before their supporters and beside each other; a throng of elders were gathered on the opposing side. The buzzing crowd hushed to pin-drop silence, when Glorfindel drifted stealthily into their midst and positioned himself in neutral territory; the quiet was deafening when Tathren and Echoriath slipped in beside him. Tathren’s Sindar uncles smiled in gentle salutation, their tense faces enlivened somewhat by the weight of Glorfindel’s presence, which in itself would cool some of the more flagrant heads among them. 

Meldior, the chosen conciliator, stepped onto the stage. 

“Ample time has passed for reflection,” he began. “The time has come for action. The first resolution before us will guide the remainder of the proceedings.” He turned to the elder faction, seated to his left. “Wise ones, will you be resolved to cement your homes in Telperion and be counted in the Sinda village?” 

So their division is done, Tathren grumbled inwardly. Echoriath took up his hand between his own, the twin heat of his palms like the promise of tomorrow. Not a sound was choked from the imperious elders, as their spokeswoman blithely rose. Though they will be tempered, with Belariel as their voice. They would not blunder into these negotiations, which means they would lure the young ones back north. Valar, but they are shrewd!

“Nay,” Belariel dissented, with such poise that none could help commend her. “We are resolved to remain but a five-year, then return north, to our rightful homes. We ask no more of our Noldor hosts than a share in their resources and a field to make our camp. Indeed, if this meadow is soon to be improved upon, then we will gladly remove ourselves across the stream.” 

A spark of foreboding flashed within him, soon kindling a small fire of mounting unease. His uncles also felt the strangeness, their stance sharpened, their manner curt. Some menace approached the collective, so swiftly he could not get a true mark on the feeling this other aroused within him. 

“Young ones,” the conciliator continued. “Will you be resolved to join with your kindred and soon return to the northern realm?” 

To Tathren’s consternation, Luinaelin himself rose to address them. His uncle had not been entirely forthright with him, yestereve at mealtime. The younger faction had met with him in secret; he was already lord to them. He glanced over at Echo, who met his anxious eyes with consolation, with fluid tenderness. Tathren reminded himself that, no matter what the Laurelin’s resolved, his heart was bound to another tribe and so were his cares. 

“Nay, we will not return,” Luinaelin vouched for his supporters, with lordly grace. “We wish those born of ages long passed strength and honor in the rearing of their tempestuous northern land; indeed, we will gladly assist them in any required capacity, as they have taught us well and are blessed among us. But we of younger years could not forgo the chance to found a colony of our own, in harmony with our Noldor brothers and in particular accord with the noble House of Elrond. Any who wish to remain with us are welcome, though both paths offer their own brutal challenges.” He glanced down at Mithbrethil for a breathless moment, then pursued an entirely different tact. “Challenges my brother and I have faced over and again, first when the Mirkwood descended, then in the establishment of Ithilien, in Arda. Yet in this emergent realm, there will be no official lord. A council of advisors will be convened by appointment, until after the residences have been erected and the village self-sufficient. The aid and opinion of those gifted the wisdom of several millennia would be esteemed beyond compare. I have come to assure you that there is a place for old and young in our humble village, though mark me when I declare there is no place for blame, prejudice, or the ire of ages long past.” 

“And what of the ire of this age, lordling?” a voice boomed from the far corner, as an elf of inestimable, feral majesty strut towards the stage. 

The younger faction gasped and gaped in unison, though the elders were not a whit rattled by the stunning entrance; indeed, the spokeswoman lowered graciously into her seat, deferring to this intruder. Tathren was confounded by his uncle’s reaction: though Mithbrethil stood up defiantly to meet this elf head on, Luinaelin struggled to swallow back the bile that so acidly, obviously singed up the walls of his throat, as if he would spit in the impressive elf’s piercing indigo eyes. Echo looked as confused as he, but Glorfindel had flushed considerably and palmed the hilt of his broadsword. He wondered if he should alert his fathers, but did not want to cause them undue distress. 

The identity of this brash elf was yet unknown to him, though he was of a burnished, leonine beauty Tathren had never before seen in an elda of any line; his skin of the gold of laurels, his mane like whips of lightening, his sapphire eyes cut hard as a diamond. A cloak of royal blue swept behind him like a thunder clap, his tunic minimally adorned with a host of entwined allegiances, so tightly, though exceptionally, embroidered that Tathren could not distinguish them. His heavy boots appeared mithril-tipped; they grounded a body of predatory force, of feline grace and of imposing musculature. He was in every way dominant, of his surroundings, of those among, of his own regal countenance and of his every sniff of emotion; one sensed that to oppose him was to risk having one’s sight scratched blind, then gouged out by a swipe of his mighty paw. Tathren found he could do naught but watch on, muttering a silent prayer for the protection of his two uncles. 

“Tis you alone who linger on injuries so old and frail they would turn to dust in the wind,” Luinaelin affronted him. “Should you finally unseal your dungeon-heart and cast wide its iron shutters to allow some fresh air within.”

“There are many here who would judge my cares most timely indeed,” the elf remarked, suavely mocking his opponent. “Those you seek to win over, with equanimity they do not value as one so louche as you, ioneth.” 

Tathren was struck as if by cave troll’s club. Dazed by the force of realization, he stared, astounded, at the intrusive elf, rallying the cyclone of rebellious emotions churning within him. I should have guessed. I should have known… Though he had quietly begun to quake, Echoriath’s strong, encouraging arms soon enveloped him as surreptitiously as he could manage; even Glorfindel, rapt on the proceedings, pressed a supportive touch to the small of his back. Tathren felt sick with want of recognition, felt the burn of vengeance, but he manfully attuned himself back to the battle of wills before him. 

His time of reckoning approached with daunting speed. He would say his peace soon enough. 

“Have you come, then, to kit-out your court?” Luinaelin retorted, unswayed by his mockery. “Take what fellows you would, so long as they go willingly. None who would reside here have quarrel with those that go north. Indeed, we are most willing to aid in this endeavor.”

“And keep our younglings for your own replenishment?” Thranduil bellowed. “Thieve the very lifesource of the Sindar from its elders, who can no longer so thoughtlessly reproduce, and mix our blood with other races, other tribes, until we up north are ancient, uncivilized, isolated mercenaries condemned to an eternity against the wilds. I think not.” A roar of support erupted from the elder collective; the king took center stage. “Who are you, my foolish, usurping princeling, to snatch those still under my rule? Heat your own kingdom off the embers of the very blaze of a realm smote by your insurrection?” 

If Tathren shook now, it was but to stifle his seething, so loathsome did he find his grandsire’s conversation. Echoriath’s arms had become shackles around him, so fearful was his beloved that Tathren would drawn undue attention to himself before the proper time. For, despite his reservations, despite his overwhelming dread of the consequences of revelation, he did believe the time was ripe for some stunning form of revolution. 

Perhaps he himself believed in the myth. 

“If you speak of Mirkwood,” Luinaelin reminded him. “Twas the spiders who smote your blaze with their lurid webbing. You merely held them aloft, until mankind could smite the Shadow.”

“If you speak of Laurelin,” Mithbrethil interjected. “She was mine ere you sailed for Aman, though I gladly cede her to you. I would have no dead elflings on my conscience, not in the Blessed Realm.” 

“You are not valiant enough to bear such a burden,” Thranduil scoffed. “Nor the calamities that tarnish a golden reign. You seek to be gracious where grit is required, you seek to skip through the meadows above rotted soil. Elflings die when war is upon us, elves will be injured in the establishment of a new realm. These are the cares and burdens of a king; and he alone must bear them for the good of his kindly people. You would form a *council*, to succor you through the troubled times, because you are of such flimsy mettle as to flee the frontier when it most requires one of your brawn! And why?! For love!!” With a flourish of afterthought, the king snorted. “I will not forget the impudence of the one to whom I would have bequeathed my crown. With every sniveling word, you prove yourself no son worthy of my house.” 

With a curse beneath his breath, Tathren could hold his tongue no longer. 

“Who among gentle elfkind would abase themselves to be so worthy?” he countered, rising to full, resplendent height. 

The king glared ferociously at him; but despite his gall, the buttery color slowly drained from his cheeks when he fully marked the features of the elf that opposed him. Tathren quietly exited his row, standing instead within the first few steps of the aisle, but well apace of the stage. In truth, he had no right to speak; none in terms of rank or import. Only injury forgave him, an injury few present knew ought of. This would be, if the time came, if the need presented itself, his masterstroke. 

“Legolas…” Thranduil whispered, though in the stale silence the word was perfectly audible to all. 

Tathren smiled mirthlessly, stepped in from the shade. He curiously found that none spoke up to correct the misbegotten king. With his best Elrohirian countenance of reason and of evenhandedness, he proceeded to make his case before them, ever offstage. 

“With every blustering breath you have winded over us,” Tathren commenced. “You have spoke naught but fraction, compliance, command. We should look upon the fraternity of the Noldor as deceptive, reject their compassionate example, isolate ourselves from all other tribes of elfkind and breed a pure Sindar race. Twas as if Sauron had never fell, in your conversation; that we are not all the children of Eru, fashioned of starlight and beholden to Illuvatar above for guidance, prosperity, wholeness. We young ones seek to divide from you, true, but we are resolved to peace if so divided; indeed, tis your faction that would provoke this separation. We would live in prosperity, here, and welcome you to our bounty. The hardships of Arda are finished for us. You yourselves won the day, ripped victory from the Shadow’s claw. Why are you so married to conflict? So devoted to challenges of such excruciating endurance that elflings must give their lives for their accomplishment?”

“No elfling has given its life under my rule for sport alone,” Thranduil fiercely rebuked him. “None that the Shadow itself did not rip from its mother’s breast!!”

“I would not speak so rashly among kindred, *grandsire*,” Tathren cautioned him with a cinder-tongue. “I will not stave off from venting the secrets of your kingly house, not even before such an esteemed audience.” 

Thranduil staggered back, thoroughly affected by the revealed identity of the glorious elf before him; an elf who kept him in dagger-sharp sights and at last stepped onto the stage. 

“Those who have been reborn will tell you,” Tathren pressed on. “The Valar above want naught but peace among elfkind. Twas for this they created the Blessed Realm, for harmony among all the tribes of Aman. You elders are free to go as you please, none would name you of ought but of peerless valor for charging the frontier. But mark me well in this: any who deny their elf-kin, be him Noldor or be she Sinda, openly defies the will of the Valar and courts the Shadow’s return. Go north if you will, but let that realm be one of peace and of welcome to all of elfkind: Sinda, Noldo, half-breeds, and the like. Else the Valar above will answer you, when you come courting their favors. And you, king, will answer to my grandmother’s wrath – to speak of love’s enslavement - for we all well know by whose grace runs the House of Thranduil.” 

Luinaelin and Mithbrethil could not help but snicker at this, though Thranduil had yet to recover from the shock of seeing his grandson, alive and so very beauteously rendered in his father’s image. 

“You are rash to speak of the Valar’s cares, young one,” came a voice from among the elders. 

“Know you not of the prophecy?” Tathren smirked wryly, relishing just a bare trace of impudence in his tone. “I am their champion.” The chorus of cheers that rung out after this declaration gave him considerable pause. Echo, however, was almost wrecked with suppressed laughter. “I hope you choose well, my dearly Sinda folk. No matter which path lures you, I am one with you.” 

With a bow of such elegant deference, none could help but be spellbound, Tathren stepped down from the stage. Echoriath awaited him there, so ruddy with pride Tathren could have kissed him senseless, were he not so eager to be gone from this madness. He winked a quick farewell at his uncles, then linked arms with his darkling love, leading him out into the meadow. 

When they had almost reached the high grass, a whistle beckoned their attention anew. Thinking the sound from Glorfindel, they halted to await him. To their astonishment, the Mirkwood king himself was soon but paces from them. 

“You, there!” he called. “Legolasion!” He stopped several strides short of them, noting with rancor how they were so affectionately woven together. Though the king did not loose any of his imperiousness, he was somewhat softened from before. “My apologies… I know not your given name.” 

“I am Tathren,” he warily introduced himself. “This is my betrothed, Echoriath Elladanion.” 

A flicker of disapproval flinted his eyes, though Thranduil knew better than to give voice to his opinion. 

“I have heard of your endeavors, in the southlands,” he instead commented. “You have grown into quite a commanding elf, if you can be judged by that display of wiles.” 

“I would not bear judgment by the likes of you,” Tathren replied calmly. “If you had had your way, I would not have grown at all, and if I hold any gift of command, such talents are a tribute to my fearless fathers; who kept me safe, nurtured me with the blithest of care, and would have me live with them despite the grievous injury my shameful begetting caused them. Shame I held close for the first hundred years of my immortality, until I came to know the unblemished love of another and recognized that shame as yours alone, Thranduil king.” 

“I will swallow the blame for my misjudgments, as any true king would,” he impressed upon him. “So long as I might also reap of the bounty I have sown. I am camped beyond the borders of this realm, attendant to your grandmother’s leisurely visitation. Would you not, perhaps, take a turn with me tomorrow? Or a meal, here in the camp, under the protection of your elf-brothers? I would discuss some matters with you.”

“I would not dare so injure my father,” Tathren snipped, shocked by his gall. Echoriath’s arm tightened around him; his beloved clearly distressed by the idea of Tathren alone with this tyrant, even under the watchful eyes of his uncles. “When he knows of this conversation, it will take all of my Ada-Hir’s hallowed diplomacy to stay him from confronting you. And as I have yet to witness any change of heart in regards to the mating of other races, nor their fellowship, in your black opinion… I must decline.”

“Come sway me, then, with your wit and reason,” Thranduil challenged him. “Prove yourself my better, in this.” 

“I need not prove it,” Tathren snapped back, exasperated by him. “I am no plotter of elfling murders. Your tragedy, grandsire, is that you know not even what resplendent bounty your unwitting loins have wrought.” He turned swiftly to go, but then thought better of a closing remark. “If you but breech the tree line and penetrate the forest, I will have a slew of grog-drunk Noldor seafarers bandy with your nethers. Keep away from my father and my family.”

Before the king could growl out a scathing reply, they both turned on their heels and strolled gracefully away; tucked, as ever, in an easy, loving hold. 

* * *

‘Unhand me!’ the prince snarled, though every one of his keen senses was affected by the grip that snared his wrist. In a motion nearly imperceptible for its swiftness, he was pinned to the cold stone wall by a body fuming with heat. Eyes black as brimstone bore into him, seemed to understand the lava-scorch that singed through his veins at the presumptuous elf’s proximity better than he. The marchwarden moved in closer - not a ghost between them – and when the prince’s free hand flew up to strike him, he found himself mercilessly overpowered, both wrists pinioned above his head like a hare on a spit. He was trapped by this vile foreigner, vulnerable to the myriad perversions he was renown for; the villain wasted no time in slamming his muscular frame against him and biting a wretched kiss into his lips.   
A jolt of pleasure stung through his traitorous body at this mistreatment, his elfhood spiked like a dagger into the marchwarden’s side. Though his cheeks burned with shame and he wrenched his face away, the prince found himself suddenly strung tight with need, a need such as he’d never experienced before. He wanted the defiant marchwarden to do his best to subdue him, wanted the fight, wanted to be forced… He kicked out a leg that was brutally shoved back, the pain blunt as his wrought shaft. Horror struck him, chill and deep, such as one of his standing had never known.   
He could do naught but give in.

With a long sigh of satisfaction, Elrohir stabbed his quill into its dried apple and reclined back into his distinguished armchair. Rare had been the day, since his triplets were begot, that he could indulge his creative streak – and then he’d felt pressured to fill the demand for his sought after children’s prose. The pass-time that had originated in the exploration of baser instincts had blossomed into a second career, though the rearing of his brood and the tales these trials inspired took precedence over his smuttier inclinations. 

Legolas, though immensely proud of his husband’s literary achievements (archived in the vaulted libraries of Vinyamar as he was), had had to forgo the more personalized, erotic endeavors of Elrohir’s ever-expanding cannon. While his earlier tales still quite effectively kindled his mate’s libido, the parchment was becoming worn from overuse, the stories themselves rote. After such nights as they had shared this last while, Elrohir was once again fired with ideas of how to insidiously ravish his dearly lover, so Legolas had more than agreeably made himself scarce that morn and bequeathed Elrohir a solitary afternoon with his quill. 

The results had been rather fruitful. In his time of authorial abstinence, Elrohir had nevertheless had occasion to reflect on the impetus for his lover’s preferences. Any decent writer implicitly understood the motivation of his characters. While Legolas was not actually personified in his fictions, Elrohir had begun to attune himself to the particular carnal acts requested and the moods that provoked them. Once a certain, though extremely complex and oftentimes irregular, pattern had established itself in his mind, he had pursued several deliberate tests; the results of which, he had reasoned, would make him both an evocative writer and a better lover. His initial works had opened a portal of entry into Legolas’ fantasy life, a profound and intensely private realm in which scenarios often played out that the archer would not dare request of his mate, nor even particularly enjoy in their bed-play. 

Elrohir was currently embroiled in the fabrication of just such a story, a brute retelling of their own courtship upon Legolas’ first majority, in which a young prince is forcefully seduced by a marchwarden from a foreign realm. Though in the reality of their loving Legolas would only allow himself to be taken passionately, lubriciously, and in complete equality, the fantasies he’d confided to his longtime lover were often tinged with acts of cruelty and of dominance he’d witnessed in his fellow soldiers, especially of mankind, during the War of the Ring. If Elrohir ever attempted to perform any such imposing acts on his mate, he’d surely come close to being throttled, but through his pen he could stimulate these unconscious urges and later reap of the salacious bounty they yielded. Even if Legolas could only bring himself to review such provocative material on solitary nights, when Elrohir was dutifully occupied elsewhere, the elf-knight would still have a hand, if indirectly, in his mate’s pleasure, which was gratifying for them both. Elrohir had come to understand that one of the true delicacies of an eternity of love-play was the exploration of another’s myriad desires, indulgences, and secret fetishes, a well of uncharted depths and constant replenishment. 

When again prepared to conjure the fifth and final act of the proud prince’s ravishment, Elrohir took up his quill. Only a few sentences into his tale, he sensed a presence at the open doorway and flicked his curious eyes aft. Legolas, reclined against the frame, watched him intently, his expression at once pensive, intrigued, and subtly mischievous. An enigmatic smile played across his lips when their eyes met; he strut into the study as a panther marks the boundaries of its lair. He surveyed the piles of parchment scattered across the desk, the three empty inkpots, the hollow-bellied carafe of water, and the cloth still clotted with his abundant spurts of cream. 

The task of a smut-teller was neither puritan nor chaste. 

With a wryly peaked brow, Legolas noted: “I hope you haven’t spent all your energies in writing.” 

“I had quite an abundance of energies to spend,” Elrohir smirked. “After such inspired nights as you have lately shown me, maltaren-nin.” When once he might have blushed, Legolas instead shone luminous in light of this praise, exposing how eagerly his incandescent eyes anticipated the perusal of those sultry sheets of parchment. “Yet fear not. I harbor much enthusiasm for the night to come, and have imagined many a saucy act to inflict upon you, my beauty.” 

“Tis you who are lush in graces, melethron,” Legolas complimented, moving stealthily towards the desk. “Hair loose and luring over your shoulders as you scribble with such intensity, worrying over each word selection as you would the manner of my rousing… savoring the fine craft of each sentence as you might the aftershocks of our kiss…” He fingered the leaves of paper distractedly, his glassy gaze sweeping the desk again, then settling on Elrohir’s own mercurial eyes. “Might I not… perhaps… are there no tales, possibly… complete?” 

“Nay, they are yet unfinished,” Elrohir informed him, nipping the tip of his tongue on the half-truth. A few of the early drafts of another tale would surely tide Legolas over, but the elf-knight was not one to forgo a chance to arouse his husband in person. He had spent most of the day indulging Legolas’ fantasies, he would take this opportunity to indulge his own. One, in scarlet particular, came readily to mind. “But I have come to this description of my protagonist and find my creative juices somewhat… dried out. I require further *inspiration*.” 

He left the taunt to lie between them, his eyes both shrewd and darkly keen. 

*

“How may I be of service to you?” Legolas asked, his eagerness palpable. 

He moved towards Elrohir’s chair, but the elf-knight stayed him before the desk. A shiver writhed up the archer’s spine; after centuries of loving Elrohir, he knew very well what would soon be requested of him. The length of his skin was suddenly electric, as he struggled to keep council under his husband’s preying eyes. The act of baring himself was just slightly within his sexual boundaries. There had been moments when he’d relished displaying himself, there had been others when he’d felt awkward under the gaze of such overt leering. He knew he chafed at the idea of being overpowered, even with such delightful intentions in mind, but he could not help the tremors that often shook him as he peeled off the layers. 

In the performance of this simple act, he was an elfling again, green and crude as on the night of his deflowering. On that long ago eve, he’d been so needful that he’d have let himself be whipped for Elrohir’s pleasure, but in the years between that time and their reunion he had fought to make himself worthy – nay, the equal – to his elf-knight in skill. His chief fear in that time – that he could never do so, never be as caring or as accomplished as his beloved – would take hold of him with the reprisal of this most honest act of submission. The elfling that still lurked inside would possess him anew and the mature elf he was would be… shamed. 

Shame, need, love, fear; these forces would overwhelm him, entice him, ply him to Elrohir’s will and wreck him within. There had been times, nights, afternoons, when he’d refused his husband outright, his mood too sharp for overt manipulation. Elrohir’s stare had softened some, probably in consideration of whether the amount of distress caused his beloved was worth such a casual request. Surely there were other means by which the elf-knight might be inspired, though none, Legolas acknowledged, as particularly tasty to him as this favored one. An appreciative gaze stroked up the length of him, taking in his limber legs, lank hips, a slender-sculpted torso, and the bulging biceps of his folded arms. 

With a harsh intake of breath, Legolas realized that his groin had begun to evidence a similar bulge; his inner protests somewhat mooted by his emergent arousal. He fingered the laces of his tunic, glanced at Elrohir again. By his tender eyes, his elf-knight had decided against voicing such an unwelcome desire; they flicked down, scouring the desktop for a draft that might console his mate’s too-obvious distress. That Elrohir could guess at his reluctance without its utterance, that he knew Legolas so implicitly as to quickly move to appease him, to put his desires before his own, made his mind in his husband’s favor. 

His tunic was tossed aside before Elrohir could even look upwards, though he lingered awhile to allow his beloved time enough to enjoy his treat. Molten mithril eyes darkened considerably at the sight of taut pectorals, his wash of abdomen, diaphanous ivory skin stretched over lean muscle. The elfling emergent in an alternative fashion, Legolas gamely popped off his boots and unbound his flaxen hair, letting the gossamer sheathes spill over his broad, bony shoulders. His husband’s flattering gasp further fired him, though he regretted not being able to view the prodding results of his enticements. Before he could pluck open the first bind of his breeches, Elrohir beckoned him forth. 

“Saes, meleth,” the elf-knight rasped, barely able to control his halting breaths. He shoved a stack of parchment aside, patted the space. “I must perform a closer examination, if I am to properly…describe…” Legolas perched on the edge of the desk and displayed himself rather wantonly, emboldened by his husband’s scorching regard. Under Elrohir’s reverent silver eyes, he felt audacious, cherished… adored. “Your magnificence.”

“But is the character as comely as I?” he queried teasingly. Even one as coveted as he could not name himself magnificent. 

“He bears a certain resemblance,” Elrohir admitted, that sizzling stare raking the length of him anew. “Though no stroke of my humble quill could properly render one such as you, with skin so immaculate, a face so noble, of such virile…” Said endowment now stretched his breeches to fraying, that look alone perhaps enough to undo him entirely. 

Yet a wood-elf was a more cunning seducer. 

“Indeed, I am glad of such a chance to discuss this art of yours, bereth-nin,” Legolas insisted. “Though you engage me beyond compare, I fear there *are* certain passages that… lack in authenticity.” As he nattered on, he lazily unbound his breech laces, to the delight and obsession of Elrohir’s devouring eyes. “I am aware, of course, that you are an author and not an anatomist, my dearest one… however. Do not tell me that in all your years of bed-play you have never taken note of certain anatomical realities, often quite literally thrust in your face.” He chuckled softly as he bared himself, slithering out of his breeches and foisting up his erection for intimate perusal. 

“Beautiful,” his husband whispered, which did prick his cheeks a little. 

Elrohir’s eyes blazed with a desperate longing, but when he reached to caress the daunting shaft, his fingers were batted away. 

“Nay,” Legolas chided him, gesturing towards the blank parchment. “*Write*.” 

A hiss was barely swallowed back, but the elf-knight did indeed take pen-sword in hand. He scribbled furiously, possibly too eager to compose ought but lust-addled, curse-spattered gibberish, but Legolas appreciated his feint nevertheless. His insistence kept his mate properly distracted, so effectively that until the archer rose, slipped into the seat behind him, and curled his own covetous arms around his lithe frame, Elrohir was yet diligently scrawling away. He paused when his nipples were roughly pinched, the tip of his teardrop ear precociously nibbled, but Legolas would not continue lest his efforts were being fully documented. 

Elrohir fought to string coherent sentences together, as his husband swept his hair aside and hotly suckled his neck. Thumbs worried his raucously hard nubs until the darkling elf growled in frustration, his own frothing member still sealed in by the tight wrap of his sarong. Legolas deftly slacked the material around his waist, opened the front, but used the frond to further incense him, brushing the velvety material up the inside of his shuddering thighs. Elrohir nearly snapped the quill in twain when Legolas pressed a ready shaft to his entrance, working the sensate, puckered contour with his slick head. 

“*Write*!!” Legolas snarled, as he slowly breached him. 

He savored the long, deadly-patient penetration, infusing the glutinous tunnel with incendiary heat. His breaths came in fitful pants, the sensual constriction and the unctuous damp conspiring to entirely madden him. Elrohir’s art was no better served, as by this time his lover had gouged two balls of parchment out of the page, his clenched, sodden fists emulsifying any ink that might remain. He eased his want-glutted husband backwards and draped his needful body over himself, as he set his hips to a giving, rapturous rhythm. After the first initial thrusts, Elrohir saw through the fugue of sensation clear enough to take his own emphatic part in the proceedings, his spine flexing as a serpent’s scales before impaling himself anew, each deep stab eliciting an ecstatic moan. The darkling elf reared like a stallion as he was ridden, so wilded by fever that Legolas could only grip into the chair and fight to stave off eruption. 

A cry ripped from the elf-knight’s throat before he could even consider release, his lap, legs, and a considerable section of the parchment spattered with hot splashes of seed. Legolas could do naught but let the flood of fire overtake him, their passion writ in thick, creamy streaks across the page. Elrohir sank against him, boneless, shivering violently after such a voluminous expenditure. 

Legolas gathered him into a close embrace and fed him plump, adoring kisses. He knew not what act of their coupling had so overwhelmed him, but Elrohir was fearfully raw, clinging quite forcefully to him and still trembling yet. He kissed his archer with anxious fervor, desperately, relentlessly, until Legolas cupped his love-ruddy face and forced his gaze upon him. 

“Your eyes,” Elrohir answered, before the inevitable question could be posed. “I need to see your eyes. I need to see how… how you love me.” He mated their mouths anew, his taste sharp with unquenched need. “Show me again, maltaren-nin, by the hearthfire. Let your eyes blacken with desire, your face beam with peerless radiance as you claim me for your own. Show me your love, Legolas.”

“Eternally, melethron,” Legolas swore, as he lifted his husband fully into his steady arms. He marveled at how, after centuries of loving, he had never marked that Elrohir disliked such a common position. He was sure that, spooned in their sultry bed, he would perhaps be more amenable to such a taking, but Legolas was somewhat relieved nonetheless that his lover was not entirely unaffected by certain situations, circumstances, plays of power. 

That he loved him enough to admit his predilections and confess that which affected him poorly. 

 

End of Part Fourteen


	15. Part 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The family celebrates the return of its boldest young elves, mysteries are solved.

Part Fifteen

After the last glow of ember was snuffed by the moist evening air, the hearth died. As the acrid fumes of the smote fire roused him from light, dreamy slumber, a crack of lightening sounded, streaked across the sky swollen with ominous gray clouds. As he peered across the pale sweep of Legolas’ back, out the arched study windows and into the blanketing night beyond, the father in him cursed another storm to unsettle his little ones. A second cuss followed suit, that their soft, shuddering bodies would pile into another’s bed and seek the ample folds of his arms, even if such a one was their very brother. 

While the lover in him savored the two days left for their leisurely coupling and the husband in him thrilled at the intimate conversation that had stretched over four engrossing afternoons, Elrohir knew that the parent of elflings only had so many opportunities to cuddle with his sprightly ones. As another blinding flash bleached Legolas’ skin a pearly white, the father in him mourned the absence of three toasty, trembling bundles hugged to them, intermittently giggling and bleating, doing everything in their precocious power to delay their rest. 

A rumble from his belly-pit put his mind towards other matters. They had coupled away the long afternoon on the luxuriously furred pelts before their hearth, until the heavy sleep of the sated had claimed them sometime after the supper hour. As was his custom once a final, braising release had finished him, Legolas had poured himself across bliss-dizzy husband and suckled his creamy flesh, until the remains of his energies sapped him into oblivion. Elrohir had drifted off soon after. Now, the press of Legolas’s trim body into his very hollow stomach reminded him of naught but the rabbit pies left for them by their cook, yet another delicacy wrought from his husband’s bountiful hunt the previous morn. In his hunger, he vividly recalled other treats spied in their larder: huckleseed cracklins with pickled agoroot, sharp Otirion cheese with chestnut croute, white flagelberries from Vinyamar orchards, and bitter mead brewed in the spring source. Though feasting on wood-elf nourished his fea, his hora required baser stuffs and with some immediacy, at that. 

Yet a rousing wood-elf appetizer might significantly heat up, with flattery, fawning, and cunning flirtation, the duration of their cold supper, so Elrohir flexed his limbs out with a languid, lascivious purr, the skin-friction between them usually enough to wake his dozing mate. To his surprise, Legolas suddenly grew rigid, his muscles bruising tense and his brow fraught. He hissed fiercely at some phantom foe, then kicked out such that Elrohir had to ease away; once free of his husband’s steady hold, his nightmares struck in earnest. Legolas thrashed about as if his arms were restrained behind his back, howling threats at the unknown enemy and spitting viciously into the air. Elrohir knew not if he was revisiting some past torture sequence or envisioning his own dismal beleaguering, but was on some level thankful this seemingly involved the incapacitation of Legolas’ sword arm, lest he be unwittingly knocked senseless and unable to reach his mate. 

As he cautiously moved to now. Knowing from experience that coos and caresses would have little effect, he grabbed his shoulders and shook him hard, snapping out his name in a stern voice. After several fruitless trials, Legolas’ growls had turned to helpless mewls; the shattering cries of one forced to witness a beloved’s brute, agonizing execution. The weary elf-knight, desperate to tare him from his own cruel unconscious, slammed him repeatedly down, slapped his cheeks scarlet, was nearly prepared to throttle him, when the archer’s blazing eyes flew open and he sucked in a razor-sharp breath. He quaked such as Elrohir had never known of his valiant husband, choking, gasping, sobbing up a veritable storm in his arms, as the wilding rain pelted like a fire-squad against the window panes. The shame of this vulnerability, even before his doting mate, caused Legolas’ cheeks to burn red as bilious lava; Elrohir had never seen his normally stoic-to-a-fault husband so shredded by something so innocuous as a nightmare. 

Which in itself was an omen black as the cinder of Sauron’s fallen form. 

As suddenly as he’d been assaulted by his dreams, Legolas sprung up to full, wet-eyed attention. Only then did he seem to recognize Elrohir, but after a quick sigh of relief, he ignored their heady state of undress and grappled to his feet. 

“There is trouble,” he barked by way of explanation. “We must fly!” 

Before Elrohir could push off the floor, Legolas lifted him upright, then dragged him along to their bedchamber as if the Nazgul were themselves chasing them. He tossed tunic, breeches, boots, and braid clasps at him, himself already halfway clothed before Elrohir could squeeze out the washcloth. 

“There is no time for toileting, meleth-nin,” he bluntly impressed upon him, flipping open their armory chest. He threw out sword-belts, scabbards, daggers, quivers, and bows upon the lust-twisted bed-sheets, an arsenal such as Elrohir had not worn since the Battle of Pelennor Fields. 

“Legolas, melethron,” he implored him, clasping the archer’s forearms and taking immovable hold. “If we are to battle such a force of evil, then we must ready some plan of attack. You must tell me, my brave one, who indeed we are fighting!!” 

To his astonishment, Legolas bit back an outpour of stinging tears. His face as white as a death shroud, he could only rasp out a portend live with violent intent.

“He has come to finish it,” he seethed, then yanked Elrohir towards the door. 

* * *

Their bed of golden hay was bristled, crackling, and damp from the incessant humidity, the wood planks about them stank of mildew and the air was ripe with sopping horse, but curled into Tathren’s arms as he was, little about the pungent atmosphere could truly bother him. 

Certainly not the occasional shrieks of elfling delight echoing up from the stalls below, where three raven haired imps aided Cuthalion in brushing down his prize riding mare, Lavana (named after the ellyth who had taken his innocence, but what did one expect of the silvery lothario that was his brother?). The patter of triplets scurrying from stall to stall could be picked out of the din, as well as snippets of instruction, as his Ada-Dan was examining two mares overburdened by late season foals they’d yet to bear, while his Ada-Fin and grandsire Elrond smoked pipeweed by the half-cocked stable doors. He and Tathren had snuck up to the hayloft for some lazy smooching, possibly the only chance for indulgence they’d have on this stormy night. 

At every thunder clap, the elflings would squeal wildly, the horses would whinny irritably, and the elders would chuckle to reassure them both. There was domestic bliss, indeed, in this Blessed Realm. 

With a glint of pure mischief, he plucked open the collar of Tathren’s tunic, then nuzzled his face in the downy, white-gold wisps revealed to him. His beloved had grown considerably more hirsute since the recent celebration of his hundred and fiftieth begetting day, as, he had learned through an insightful volume on peredhil lore and legend, others of his kind had similarly evidenced. His man-blood delayed the full maturation of his adult form past the usual elven mark of a century, while the fea allowed his more manly attributes, such as broader shoulders, a meatier frame, and the aforementioned thatches of hair, to reign in splendor for an eternity. Like Elrond, Tathren was truly half-man, half-elf, thus was bequeathed a chest-full of flaxen fluff, brackish underarms, and a patch of silky strands to laurel his mortal-thick member. Though Tathren had been overly concerned – indeed, almost deliciously bashful – about the sudden solidifying of his form and the distressing emergence of a pelt upon his front, Echoriath had flattered him into flush-cheeked acceptance; but he had not even amended the truth. 

He had been more than aroused by this subtle transformation, he had been ravenous to the point of glutting himself: delving into sharp-scented crevices, stroking the gossamer plain of his chest, relishing how the coarse hairs scraped his chin while he serviced his beloved. To speak nothing of the way needfulness now struck his peredhil lover, his desire often so acute as to tempt forcefulness, not that Echoriath minded the occasional night of manhandling. Indeed, he had not thought Tathren could ever prove *more* alluring to him, but with the passing years his golden beauty was by nature refined and Echoriath’s hunger grew more elemental. He could not dare dream how he might long for his husband once they were bound, how this forever mating might heighten their physical pleasure past the ravishing that nightly besotted him. He was almost relieved that the ceremony had been delayed a year, to allow him to adapt to the merciless, primordial force his lover had become. 

A force that now strained quite potently against his inner thigh, from within its breech-cage. 

Tathren’s iridescent aqua eyes were penitent, but desperately needful, when he quit the downy wisps and gazed tenderly up. His beloved’s nascent maturity caused him to be extraordinarily sensitive to even the most innocent stimulation. What their sensuous kisses had prompted, bodies pressed hot and ardent neck suckling had prolonged, until self-restraint became outright impossible. Were they only among elders, Echo would not have thought twice about relieving his dearly one; even though Cuthalion would tease their skin raw with future merriment. Yet any more than some involved caresses courted exposure, if not to actual eyes then to the piqued ears of the elflings below. Echoriath would simply had to assure his flamed beloved that none would hear his moans. 

Crawling over him with predatory flair, he clamped a luscious kiss to his mouth, drinking deep, plundering thoroughly, and stopping even the most sultry groan from escape. Breeches were soon shoved down, arms defiantly pinioned into the chafing hay and legs locked wantonly open, as Echo began a scorching grind of hard-swollen shafts between them. Fuelled by equal parts of thrill, foolhardiness, and trepidation, Tathren bucked up viciously, the entire length of his skin washed rose with exertion. Twas not long before he crested, an ecstatic howl not entirely blunted by Echo’s tongue, though faint enough not to pique attention amid the peals of elfling laughter below. Echoriath bit into a salty shoulder to stave off his own cry; his earlier musings on Tathren’s peredhil magnificence having roused him more than he’d originally esteemed. 

He sank with a crunch into the welcoming shards of hay, twining with Tathren in their usual lazy way. They shared a soft giggle at their stickiness; he was sure none of the elders would mistake the blush of afterglow upon them, when they finally corralled their tipsy senses and skipped down from the loft. Those prying eyes could wait awhile, however, as for the moment there was a love-bite to balm with a few skilled laves, seed to sop up with an increasingly-vital handkerchief, and a emboldened peredhil body to snuggle down with. 

*

When they had lingered above for a longly while, Tathren’s face nested in his beloved’s ebony mane and his steamy breaths gusting down the slope of his ear, he heard the stable door crash in. Through a cacophony of harsh voices, they pushed up onto their elbows, but were unable to properly peer below. As no foreign voices sounded and the little ones did not protest this intrusion, they took their time readying themselves, loathe to cover up, to lace in, to break from their tender hold. 

“Where *is* he?!” a horror-stricken voice demanded, before fleet boot-soles thwacked up the loft ladder. 

Legolas leapt onto the landing and scoured the area, until eyes haunted a spectral blue alit upon them. Tathren smirked at his father, at his own compromised position – caught as he was refastening his breech-laces – but his sire betrayed not a glimmer of bemusement, merely acute anxiety. Stomping over to them, he yanked Tathren to his feet, into a crushing hug, his hands furiously feeling for bruising, a wound, a fracture. While Tathren himself hadn’t the faintest notion what had brought on this frankly bizarre show of affection, Echoriath’s lush features were soon pregnant with understanding, with compassion for the startled father. 

“I swear, Ada-Las, he has come to no harm,” the darkling elf assured his wrought uncle. “He spoke with such wisdom, such heart… Ereinion himself would have wept at his poignancy, would have been fired by his call to action.” 

“I wish only that this day had never come to pass,” Legolas glowered, though he laxed his hold to overtly examine him. “Has Elrond seen to you? Has he made note of any strange marks, black auras, signs of poison or spellcasting about you?” 

“Ada, I am entirely well,” Tathren insisted, comprehension dawning at last. “He will cause no trouble in the vale, grandmother would never forgive him.” 

“He cares only for vengeance,” Legolas ignored his reasoning, looking raptly into his eyes for evidence of the black arts’ thrall. “Swear to me you did not challenge him, ioneth.” 

“I did not challenge him!” Tathren scowled, bordering on foul humor. “Ada, I have my wits about me!” 

“*Legolas*,” Elrohir beckoned his temperance, as he stepped onto the hayloft. “Meleth, you are frightening the little ones. They have never seen you rage so; they are all aflutter below.” 

A spark flared in Legolas’ eyes, as he digested his mate’s concern. 

“Were they near, when you confronted him?” Legolas demanded anew. “Were they exposed to his wrathful bluster?!” 

“They were entirely safe,” Echoriath interjected, growing weary of his accusatory tone. “Ada-Dan came to fetch them home to our foremothers and Ada-Fin accompanied us into the assembly. There was never any chance of harm, Ada-Las – if I believed even the merest threat opposed my beloved, I would have dragged him home myself.” Echoriath’s sympathetic, though adamant, eyes seemed to finally reach the harried golden elf. A gentling touch from Elrohir followed suit, along with a hearty clasp from Tathren himself. 

“Meleth, will you not heed their testimony?” Elrohir further soothed him. “They are whole, hale. The storm has passed.” 

With an anxious wince, Legolas whipped around to face him. “But Tinuviel?!” 

“Both Mithbrethil and your Naneth have sworn he knows naught of Tinuviel’s birth,” Elrohir reminded him, weaving consoling arms around his frazzled beloved. 

“He traffics with the Laurelin elders,” Legolas objected, though without his earlier fever. “One of them may have…” 

“Tinuviel sleeps in the Lord’s House, Ada,” Tathren informed him. “We spoke with Nenuial upon our return and thought it best if all the little ones rested here awhile, until our elders could properly – and *calmly* - asses the situation. Though I doubt any trouble will come of this encounter, we are not careless.” 

“Merely bold enough to dally in a hayloft,” Elrohir taunted wryly. “With your entire family occupied below.” 

Even Legolas laughed generously at this gibe, while Tathren and Echoriath essayed a ruddier palette for their cheeks. Yet the archer and vigilant father would not be entirely dissuaded from his course.

“You may indeed be hale, pen-tathar,” he noted carefully, stroking a doting touch through his son’s sheathes of flaxen hair. “But surely such an encounter riled you… dredged up emotions long imprisoned within…?” 

At this potent remark, Elrohir also became readily troubled by the consequences of this unexpected confrontation. 

“Seeing him in the flesh was rather… daunting,” Tathren hushly admitted. “But he was so arrogant of manner, of such self-inflated countenance, that I soon saw through his over-polished veneer to the cowardly elf beneath. To think I had once wished to know him… I must again beg forgiveness for the trouble this wrongful desire caused between us, Adar-nin. Your advice was sage, objective and inviolate; he loves nothing more than his hold on others, than rule at any cost. If I may take some heart from the circumstance of our encounter, it is in the knowing that I am more than worthy of him – I am his better in strength, compassion, and valor, for your love has raised me so. I have had but a taste of the bitterness you combated, of the obstacles you faced to see me born. That you did so with such conviction and such love bests me through. I am… forever grateful, for your gifts to me, for your sacrifice…” 

Tathren soon found himself plunged anew into the dual holds of his adoring fathers, swept away as they were by the feeling behind his humble words. 

“Twas no sacrifice at all,” Legolas promised him. “To see you so gloriously grown.” 

“Nay,” Tathren countered him, as they all reluctantly eased off. “I know too well the comfort and caring of a father’s affection. Twas a momentous sacrifice.” 

“Yet I wonder if the foregoing of Thranduil’s affection would be weighted by such a steep price,” Echoriath considered, as they all made their way towards the ladder. 

A glance back at his golden father’s sober visage told Tathren how wrong his beloved was. 

*

The heavens above crashed with bolts of live, livid lightening, as the coal-black firmament crackled with sparks in their wake. The shroud peak of Taniquetil burned fierce, streaking the clouds of gray fog with orange flints and puffing its billows with angry red fumes. Gales of serpent-tailed wind whipped down the mountainside to lash mercilessly through the trees, tearing terrible cyclones of leaves from their startled boughs. The most fearsome storm the vale had seen in all its years raged beyond their trembling shutters; the climate within Elrond’s foyer was no less likely to thunder out reason’s feeble restraints, such was the atmosphere weighted with virulent emotion. 

“The Valar themselves are infuriated by the happenings in our humble vale,” Elrond himself noted, as he lingered by the window. “They like not to see their heroes so distressed.”

“The Mirkwood may have distracted them from his machinations,” Glorfindel snorted in disgust. “But here before their hallowed mount, his dubious dealings are laid bare. He will face their wrath if he but dares to devise.” 

Seated with such regal countenance as even Elrond rarely affected, the Balrog-slayer betrayed not but the boldest confidence. Long accustomed to deciphering Thranduil’s mind-games, he held little fear that the former Mirkwood king could be thoroughly trounced by the esteemed company collected for this unexpected, unofficial family council. He was, however, one of the few with such an irrefutable belief in the ultimate inefficacy of Thranduil’s doddering might, as most of his progeny were assembled there. 

With every glance in the direction of any of her three grave-faced sons, Laurelith further bittered towards the husband she had so recently reconciled with, the garish color of the gutting hurt he had caused each sterling one like a stain on her heart. She inwardly marveled that, after the blunder of her reunion with her imperious bonded, they could even think to entrust her with the coddling of her precocious granddaughter, the tiny miss Tinuviel, who in deep, peach-cheeked slumber was completely oblivious to the goings on around her. 

The triplets had been far more riled by their golden father’s fraught manner. Once he’d descended from the hayloft, they had forced his attention on them, keeping about his and Elrohir’s legs while they walked the short path to the main house. The first rumbles had struck upon their entrance therein, at which point Nenuial swept into the hall and her spooked sons could not thereafter be pried from her skirts. Their gentle mother had finally cooed them into a light, tremor-ridden sleep before the blazing hearth; she was now wrapped tight there with them, along with Miriel and Oronath, tucked into the arms of a vigilant Cuthalion. 

With Haldir called away to lead the security patrol, Erestor had gratefully joined them, his calming influence and clearheaded suggestions vital to the tense proceedings. Seated primly in a soft-cushioned chair, he kept one hawk-eye on his sleeping babes and one on his former charges; the loremaster would never truly be other than their guardian. Though he sat chastely twined with his mate, Elladan hovered near Echoriath; who was similarly reclined with Tathren, with an ease of manner and an air of inner fortitude neither must have actually felt. 

A distracted Mithbrethil positioned himself rather close to the fire, as if in need of its warmth on this dark night; his absent visage clearly longing to be elsewhere, in another’s dulcet embrace. That Thalarien was quietly dozing in her husband’s tender arms undoubtedly did little to alleviate the burden of separation for him, though Luinaelin, haggard and aggravated from an endless day of negotiations, battled so against his fatigue, he would enjoy naught but his wife’s consoling presence this night. 

As his pensive father drifted back from the window, Elrohir completed his survey of the hall’s assembly and graced his mate’s pallid countenance with concerned argent eyes. In truth, he had never before seen Legolas so utterly provoked, nor so blatantly afraid. Fear was not an emotion he had ever associated with one of his beloved’s valor. Legolas, however, was a warrior to his very core, and no warrior leapt into the fray without first sharply assessing his own potential weaknesses. His ferocious love of and elemental protectiveness over Tathren, Tinuviel, and the triplets were the archer’s most glaring weaknesses; that they were threatened now brought out in him both the lion and the lamb. The lion would stop at nothing to keep them safe, but was often too sure of its skill to think out proper strategy. The lamb was the yet innocent heart that loved them with a warrior’s pure regard for his charges, which left his own self-possession perilously vulnerable. 

If any harm were to come to them, Elrohir feared it would be the end of him. 

That no promise nor pronouncement of the Mirkwood king’s could convince Legolas of his earnestness and good intentions disturbed him little. Creatures obeyed their inner urgings; Elrohir himself regretfully believed that not even Laurelith’s unblemished regard could restore her husband to his right mind. The king had allowed their family tragedy, his estrangement from the other elven tribes, the murk of the Mirkwood, perhaps even some small dose of the Shadow itself, to seep into his beleaguered, grieving senses long ago; only a direct petition to the Valar above could cleanse him of this wretchedness, over years of time and of penance. Only then could he dare to beg his sons’ forgiveness, tentatively begin to know his long-grown grandchildren. 

Yet Thranduil’s rage was easily wrought, his will and might of colossal intent. This was Elrohir’s immediate concern; that in his haste to protect their younglings Legolas would be overbold and clash with his crazed father, thereby effective another tragedy of epic proportions. One not necessarily fatal to his mate. Elrohir, though he adored his husband and knew him, in their bed, to be a truly soft-hearted spirit, also knew he was possessed of enough mettle, enough blinding terror, enough of his own injurious anger that he could, if thoroughly provoked, kill his sire. 

Legolas had held Tinuviel longly before ceding her to his mother, had denied his sadness but had been deeply stricken when the triplets had fled to their own naneth. Though he would always love each and every child with abandon, he hated the weakness this love exposed and blamed himself for the threat to their safety. The lion and the lamb were at war within him; Elrohir was unsure that even one of his admittedly vast diplomatic skills could resolve these polar forces in his mate to a sensible course. Not when baited by his own raucous fears, the horror-pregnant thought of losing husband, son, and thereby his own wits in a blow of Thranduilic proportions. 

Though Legolas was bent forward over his lap, arms balanced on his knees as if to sprint forward at the necessary moment, Elrohir squeezed his thigh with a caging grip. His only recourse, at present, was to distract Legolas with his own acute worry, force his husband to concentrate on his well-being, not on aggressive thoughts. The ruse worked instantly. Legolas leaned back into the chesterfield cushions and wove a tight arm around him, even taking his lips in a long, gentling kiss; the barest echo of their afternoon’s loving rippling through him. 

“You are my strength, star-rider,” the golden elf whispered, as he clasped his dearly husband’s hand. 

He stole another heartening kiss, before turning his attention to Elrond, though beside them Tathren’s smirk was unmistakable. He winked at his mischievous son, as much to reassure him as to taunt him, who gestured fondly in return. 

“The hour grows late,” Elrond summoned them to order. “And I would sleep in resolution. What word from the colony?” 

“My brother and I have been acclimated as initial lords of the hamlet,” Luinaelin explained. “After Tathren’s brave words, many have resolved to remain awhile and break ground with us, though a small minority is yet loyal to their king.” 

“I wager more will follow you, by dawn,” Erestor predicted. “With the Valar’s will railed from mountain spire down to the very bowels of earth beneath us, few will be so blind as to ignore them.” 

“Yet our people are not slurred as mule-headed for no ready reason,” Mithbrethil pointedly remarked. “My Adar is shrewd enough to spin their displease in his favor, gaining a few converts. Twas ere his method in Mirkwood, and many here are longtime Mirkwood folk.” 

“Some will go and some will stay,” Legolas concluded for them. “This is of relatively little concern, a village will be founded regardless and you, my brothers, will be lords. But will he come for our children?” 

“He already has,” Glorfindel stated bluntly. “And they have answered him.” 

“Aye,” Tathren seconded, but with gentility enough to soothe, not bait, his father. 

“Do your children know him, Luinaelin?” Elrond asked. 

“Nay, and they will not,” Luinaelin insisted, matching Legolas for aggression. “We have already made plans to move them hither, by accepting your gracious invitation, Lord Elrond. I, myself, will keep a tent at the colony, but as Thalarien is nearing her birthing time, I would she reside here.” He patted his wife’s plump belly, as he spoke this, though his inquisitive stare turned on his mother. “But our children are not the only ones needful of protection. What action are you resolved to, Nana?” 

With a long, bleating sigh, Laurelith confessed: “I feel, ioneth, that in light of all his grievous behavior, that a council of this bleak nature must be called to order… I cannot justly return to him.” 

The silence that met this decision could have stopped time itself. 

Beside him, Legolas shuddered such that Elrohir thought him weeping, though he collected himself with a swiftness typical of his self-possession. Though the idea of his mother in that tyrant’s embrace sickened his husband to his own purging illness, if Laurelith did not rejoin her husband and return to Laurelin, there was no anticipating the fury of Thranduil’s vengeance upon them. None assembled could be convinced of his seeing his part in her estrangement, of his vowing to better himself to deserve her love anew. The price for her safety would be high, though not one of her sons would see ought but its payment, even with their own lives. 

If Elrohir despaired at this prospect, then the subsequent interjection struck ice-cold.

“Then I will face him,” Tathren declared, though Echoriath blanched almost instinctively. 

“You will do no such thing!” Legolas countered roughly. “Tis my blood he’ll seek, *I* alone will meet his wrath.” 

“Never alone will you stand, gwanur-nin,” Luinaelin amended for him. 

“Not when I am childless, unbound,” Mithbrethil insisted. “Ever has he kept my counsel close. I will renounce my lordship, be reconciled, journey north with him. With Nana gone, he will cling to me. I will convince him of my repentance.” 

“What of Aneandrel?” Luinaelin demanded of him. “You cannot forsake her and be content, Brethil.” 

“What of contentment, when these sweet ones are in peril?!” Mithbrethil shot back. “Those lovely ones by the fire, Tathren to be bound in a year’s time… your own babes, Luinaelin… Tinuviel so comely in our Nana’s arms? A flirtation is small sacrifice, when such ones are at stake.” 

“Think you they will ere be safe if our father watches his one hope fade from grief?” Legolas affronted him. “A flirtation, Brethil? If Aneandrel is but a flirtation, then Elrohir and I are but swordbrothers.” He appealed to the greater audience, his face lit anew. “Come now, we are among the keenest minds and the bravest hearts of our people! There must be a peaceful resolution at hand!” Despite his words of encouragement, he sighed warily, his brow creased with the effort to corral an archer’s wits to their task. Elrohir hugged him close again; he’d moved away some in his ardor. 

To their commingled horror, Tathren stood to address them all. 

“I believe, Ada, my familiar ones,” he solidly began. “That you are somewhat mistaken in your assumptions. Why would he come for you, Ada-Las? You journeyed to Mirkwood to face him, not once but twice before we took leave of Arda. He could have easily forced his way into our family home, bragging to grandmother of his desire for reconciliation, yet he remains hidden on the outskirts of our realm. If he wanted to confront you… he would have. Nay, it is I who lured him into stealthier tactics. He would break bread with me, as he has already himself suggested. I know not what his ultimate designs are, but I know this: I can subdue him. I can best him. At the very least, I can momentarily appease him with a brief audience.” 

“Tathren-“ Legolas attempted to deny him, but Elrond quickly interrupted.

“Let him speak, my bond-son,” he all but commanded, which forced Legolas’ silence. 

“There has been much talk, of late, of the prophecy’s fulfillment,” Tathren commenced anew. “Of the fruition of my future bond with Echoriath. The Laurelins in particular are wedded to this idea of my Valar-blessed potential; indeed, were I of greater years, they would want me for their lord. Their nearsightedness in this is somewhat astounding and I give it no import. But my grandsire, in his ever-constant paranoia, very well might. He has tried to smite me before. Now that I threaten the continuation of his rule, he very well might be plotting a similar action.” 

“All the more reason to keep you away,” Elrond himself softly suggested, as none dared interrupt the young elf after the Lord’s order. 

“Perhaps,” Tathren acknowledged, then inhaled a fortifying breath. His next statements would be controversial at best, but make them he must. “I have lately read the prophecies myself, in hopes to countermand some of these forced interpretations. As I reflected on the text, I came upon… two notions specific to our trouble this evening. First, that the prophecy nowhere states explicitly that Echoriath and I are bound as mates when Mandos is opened free.” The company absorbed this idea with pensive silence, adjusting their own assumptions to his newly theory. “We already evidence, as routinely examined by our grandsire Elrond, a preternatural connection. Our hora have yet to join as one, but our fea have long been commingled. By this reasoning, the prophecy’s requirements are, in part, fulfilled. As to the second, the lines are vague in specifics, which led me to reflect further on our present circumstance. Thranduil has ever attempted to… to do away with what he has wrought. In this, he may act in league with some form of Shadow, but we know he is not bedeviled, merely overproud. Perhaps, then, this opposition is the will of the Valar. Perhaps I am meant to–“

“Nay!!” Echoriath cried out, his burnished eyes instantly alight with tears. “Nay, nay, *nay*, meleth-nin!!” The keenest mind among them, he had already made that vital leap to Tathren’s unthinkable conclusion, the vision of which instantly drenched him in the most unforgiving sorrow ever known to the tender elf. 

Tender, indeed, were Tathren’s eyes, when he glanced back to soothe him. 

“Melethron,” he murmured with lush affection. “If tis their will, none can countermand it. We must face the truth boldly. There are other hearts at sake, Echo, others loves and lovers. Our sacrifice would render so many unto joy, and not without recompense. We would not be apart eternally, merely for a time.” 

“I cannot bear such an absence,” Echoriath bleated, now weeping openly and curled into Elladan’s vigilant arms. “I could not… my heart would… my fea…” 

“You are not meant to, nin ind,” Tathren whispered, reaching out to stroke his slick cheek. “That, too, would be part of their design. We are meant to free Mandos together, through our love. Mayhap through the challenge of… a tragic love.” He snatched up the darkling elf’s trembling hand, pressed a hot kiss to its palm. “I would do all in my power to return to you soonest, melethron-nin. I would shake the Halls of Mandos such that their stone would crumble to dust, for love of you, Echoriath.” 

“But not from within!!” Echoriath mewled, letting the others in on their cryptic quarrel. 

In his quiet corner of the chesterfield, Elrohir considered this news with mounting devastation. He, too, had read the prophecy in full, and though there was no evidence that Tathren was mistaken in his conclusions, neither was their proof of his rightness. Yet he could not still the rapid-fire pulse through his tense veins, nor could his parent’s heart accept this fate for his golden child. 

“Have you not accounted for the others that might fade from grieving you,” Elrohir opined, as delicately as he could manage under such strained circumstance. Legolas stared at him with palpable relief, his tongue rendered almost witless at his son’s insinuation. “Though they would all be freed by your rescue, are you truly willing to allow your brothers to be raised without fathers, your grandparents to live without their son, your uncle without his twin, say nothing of other fathers, brothers, sisters, mothers that might be smote by your fall? Surely, the Valar have not blessed their heroes with such bounty so that they might all be assembled in Mandos for a few centuries of reckoning before its tumultuous end? Mark me well, ioneth, you are infinitely brave to venture such a notion, but there is none here who will allow you to proceed as if it were commanded from on high, when there is not evidence enough to support even its suggestion, valiant as your words have been and the later action implicit within them is.” 

Tathren nodded, conceding his harried father’s point, and sunk back into his seat. His eyes, however, were so bright with resolve that Elrohir now feared two of his dearly elves would do something dangerously rash. 

“Yet his argument has some soft merit, to my great regret,” Elrond responded kindly to his sobered son. “Tathren has rather convincingly argued that he is Thranduil’s primary target, whatever his intentions. Perhaps some carefully escorted meeting might at the very least allow us to better navigate the minefield of his motivations.” 

Swallow back a growl, Legolas fought his rousing ire and stated plain: “I know my father, Elrond. He has wanted to end Tathren’s life from before his very birth!”

“We cannot prevail without some sacrifice, Legolas,” Erestor, ever the voice of reason in Elrond’s house, impressed upon him. “I am but a newly father, but I know what it is we ask of you. I would never give a second of my son’s time to a tyrant such as your Adar. But the threat to your other children, to your brother’s brood is terribly real. Even the barest, most offhanded mention of Tinuviel’s existence could stir up the king’s darkest instincts, once he knows you have begot a child of pure elven blood, once his mate has forsaken him.” His point shot true, by the archer’s grunt of frustration; Erestor gracefully moved on to specific arrangements. “If we are all agreed on this course of action, I will set up a luncheon at the Laurelin camp in a few days time. Glorfindel and I will accompany Tathren ourselves. Haldir and Rumil will stand guard, along with Tathren’s own company. If at any time Tathren wishes to depart, we will spirit out of there so swiftly, not the Nazgul themselves would mark us.” 

“The question remains before us,” Elrond formalized the proposition, as Elrohir’s innards writhed with contempt for so fastidious, so vile a solution. Legolas drew ever closer to him, unsure whether he could give his bond-father a voiced acquiescence. “Are we agreed?” Elrond turned, first, to the subject at hand. “Tathren?” 

“I am most heartily agreed,” he nodded, his warrior’s streak humbly relishing the challenge. 

“As are we,” Elrohir spoke, mostly to relieve his husband of such a dark duty. “With the necessary provisions in place.” 

“Well noted,” Elrond smiled reassuringly at his son, who sought sustenance in his sage gray eyes. He would take private counsel with both Elrohir and Legolas, later. “Others?” Each in turn voiced their agreement, most wishing Tathren good fortune and gentle reason. When all but one was accounted for, Elrond shone a patient, balming look upon his still sniffling grandson. “Echoriath, you have not said your piece.” 

The darkling elf shut his brimming eyes, then drew in a halted, harrowed breath. When his lids raised, his gaze was distant, darkened, as if some vital spark had been smote from him. 

“I will give no word against my oath of love,” he replied, with gripping clarity. “If this action is taken, though taken with utmost security, it is nevertheless without my consent.” 

Though Tathren’s face was ashen, Elrohir marked that Elladan’s betrayed more than a hint of pride. He instinctively knew his twin would have chosen like to his son’s calamitous decision; indeed, he himself might have been so bold in his youth. The choice, however, was a young one, born of a peacetime life. Yet Tathren and Echoriath must suffer their own lovers’ quarrels, if they are to be righteously bound. Most of the elders present instantly recognized this, and the resolution was passed. 

“Very well, then,” Elrond concluded. “Erestor will take the matter into his own extremely capable hands. I suggest we retire, my dear ones, lest we prove too exhausted, on the morrow, to enjoy the very impish elflings we sought this night to protect.” 

With that, the company drifted off in itinerant pairs – Celebrian with Laurelith, who yet cradled Tinuviel; Elrond sharing a private word with Erestor; Luinaelin carrying his dormant wife; Glorfindel offering Mithbrethil a nightcap; Elladan assuring that Tathren and Echoriath would take a chamber within; even Cuthalion woke long enough to bear his two charges to a proper bed - though Elrohir and Legolas lingered on the chesterfield. Legolas was yet a mire of irresolution, so far from the hot-blooded elf that had claimed him that afternoon as to almost bring Elrohir himself to tears. The archer rested a leaden head on his mate’s shoulder, seeking a rare moment of consolation from him. Though himself worried beyond measure for their courageous son, he knew a husband’s valor was now required of him; thus he gathered Legolas tightly to him and gave him blithe succor. 

Before long, a faint tug on his tunic arm awoke him to the world around. He raised his face from Legolas’ silken crown to discover three sets of onyx eyes, their black irises flickering with reflected firelight, fixed imploringly upon them. Brithor was the first to reach out to them, hoping to somehow ease his fathers’ sadness with the tender hugs that had so often heartened him. Ciryon and Rohrith soon similarly beckoned, their dark eyes wet with sympathy. He spied Nenuial’s knowing wink, as she slunk out the door to check, no doubt, on the state of Tinuviel’s hunger. 

Legolas, as near to elation as he could muster, scooped up his bushel of sons and drew their warm bodies between them. Even though they could not tell them of what had transpired that evening – their brother’s peerless valor, their grandsire’s heinous behavior, their own dire circumstances – they took ample consolation from their unquestioning support and cherished the treasures the Valar had so amply bequeathed them. 

 

*

Spinning the delicate pewter handle three rotations counter-clockwise, Tathren released a spill of foamy hot-spring water into the hollow tub. Perched on the swooping edge, which arced over a voluptuous diameter to curve up at the end like a teasing tongue, he breathed deeply of the steam clouds that billowed about the faucet, the mineral aftertaste so reminiscent of the sea. As if the balmy bath would not already be enticing to his fraught and haggard beloved, he sprinkled scented herbs into the gushing water: jasmine, cardamom, and a faint trace of clove spice. If his treacherous self would not be called upon to mollify Echoriath’s tension-strained muscles, then the very least he could do was provide him with an alternative remedy to ease his physical aches.

Tathren doubted the sweetly elf’s spirit would find rest this night. 

Yet clad in his light undershirt and now chafing breeches, Tathren wondered, as he crossed to relight a storm-smote candelabra, how longly Echoriath might linger in the hallway, in heavy-hearted consultation with his Adar. While their disagreement at the makeshift council had hardly been the first time they’d found themselves of opposing minds, twas indeed the only occasion on which they’d been of conflicting opinion on such a fundamental issue. Earlier, as they made their way from the common room to their guest bedchamber, Echo had glided through the halls behind them as if a shadow of himself. Once arrived at the threshold, he could not bring himself to forgo his father’s strong, consoling presence, and thus begged a private audience of him. 

Tathren had well understood, even encouraged such a consultation, though his approval had hardly been solicited. He himself wished Elrohir and Legolas were not so absorbed in their own apprehension as to almost forget that their eldest son, while of tireless courage and of voluntary will, had acted purely out of heart and thus required some of their peerless heartening, to supplement his own. Left to his own devices for over an hour of stagnant isolation, Tathren found he could do naught but silently fret. 

Was he needlessly endangering himself, the sanctity of his family, his future bond with his beloved, by taking on such a foolhardy challenge as to meet blunt with his murderous grandsire? Was this simple, yet pestilent trouble the first spore on the unblemished face of their togetherness? Would his warrior’s resolve be the severing of them? What if this action, this choice countermanded the Valar’s intended destiny for him, broke him from Echoriath forever, and rendered the prophecy moot? Could he survive an eternity without his heart, his Echo, whose thoughtless wounding earlier that eve had regressed his poor, tender elf back to the bleating timidity of his minority? 

Echoriath had not seemed so brittle, so diminished, not since the first months of their bleak winter ensconced in the brute mountain pass. The anguished elf that had met his eyes in the common room had been the one who had pined for him from afar for a half-century; the one who had scurried away to his sketch pad when roused hot-cheeked by embarrassing feeling and the one who had toiled away in his greenhouse to avoid the sight of Tathren frolicking in the gardens, lusty-eyed, with a past dalliance. The potential return of such a Spartan way of life had maddened him to grief, had made his stout-hearted Echoriath forget his own tenaciously-earned strength. 

Tathren could not fault his beloved for this sudden weakness, not when the idea of a millennia without his gentle one so petrified his own heart that its stalactite surface would stake him from within, were the most horrific circumstance of his young life to come to pass. He was asking – nay, demanding – that Echo bet on a power-drunk elf’s passivity in the face of the ultimately loss; little wonder his beloved scorned him so. Yet, ever of Thranduil’s bullish kindred, he could not allow himself to give in to these black thoughts. Instead, he had busied himself with relighting the torches, adding a few candelabra spokes to their subtle glow, plumping the veritable bouquet of pillows, and drawing an unctuous bath for his weary love to soak in, as longly as his troubles might plague him. 

His equally restoring embrace would await in the bed beyond, though Tathren did not delude himself that his soothing arms would be soon required after such shameless behavior. 

As he extracted two luxurious velour robes from the linen chest at the foot of the bed, he smelt the rich, heather-laced musk that permeated his beloved, then heard him bolt the lock. With a sigh so weighted it whimpered some at the end, Echoriath padded over to the bedside, where the robes were now laid out, and began to undress. Tathren was unsure what to make of this gesture, whether to offer his usual, affectionate assistance or to allow the darkling elf time to make his needs known. He chose the latter – wisely, he thought – as Echoriath had yet to meet his anxious eyes with even the most cursory glance. 

Echo’s sobriety did little to impeded his implicit efficiency. He deftly folded his clothes as they were stripped off, hanging the necessary garments off a nearby chair, tucking his boots under, and loosing his hair with typically fleet form. By the time Tathren tugged off his shirt – cautiously positioned on the opposite side of the huge bed – Echoriath was entirely naked, neither displaying his considerable beauty nor concealing it in some backward notion of propriety; his comeliness was neither weapon nor tool, but plain, unavoidable fact. He abandoned the robe on the coverlet and walked humbly over to the bath, apparently unable to resist its rejuvenating promise. 

Tathren kept his gaze fixed to his brief toileting tasks during his own bedtime routine, his solemn stare uninvited to the frothing tub, to the assurance of a single, penetrating flicker of the golden-eyed elf within. Once unfettered, he crept between the welcoming sheets, their satin folds of little comfort to his stricken, hardened soul. He did not bother to feign a sleep that would elude him the entire, empty night, but instead sought out the sultry moon, whose midsummer swell loomed luminous above, now that the storm had tempered some. He lay transfixed beneath her dulcet cast for a long, listless while, until waters rippled circuitously in the distance, the flap of sodden towel sounded, and lithe feet dug a path through the bristly bedside rug. A dull weight sank into the other half of their mattress, heavy with languor, with sheer, crippling exhaustion. 

There was no solicitous touch to stroke up the length of his back, though its ghostly memory tickled up his spine such that he had to fight the impulse to shiver. 

Tathren thought, suddenly, strangely, of his mother. Though death was a truth of mankind, even for those whose lives were stretched out by their ancient elven lineage, she had nevertheless chosen to bear a child who would considerably outlive her. She knew her babe would see her fall, knew he would pass an eternity with only the sparest of memories of her, but she never wavered in her want to give him life. She could have, so easily, conspired with Thranduil to bring about his death in utero, where not even the Valar could have reformed him, but instead she wailed for Elrohir in face of his assassins, fortified herself in Lorien for the duration of the War, and forgave Legolas his distance, his prolonged absences. Indeed, with two such fathers to raise him, she could have given him up entirely to them, but instead she gave up her very kin to be at his side as he grew, save those three vagabond years his fathers had allowed her to take him journeying with her Dunedain clan, so that he might know his manly side. 

Were it not for the many sketches that kept permanent record of her beauty, Tathren would have already forgotten the soft plains of her face, the tender sparkle of her eyes and the worshipful gaze she always blessed him with. As peredhil, he was not possessed of the vigilant memory resources of full-fledged eldar, so the sketches were intensely precious to him. The knowledge of these and her final words to him he had buried in the most secret valve of his heart, a vault dedicated to her alone. Twas a strength similar, but never equal, to hers he had drawn on at the council. When he proposed the potential of his fall, of his breaking of Mandos from within, he had remembered her blithe, undaunted calm as she had bid him a final farewell. His dear Nana, of hallowed, battle-hardy Dunedain stock, had not failed him at the last, though he had been nearly abolished by sorrow. 

He was startled back into the present moment, when that telltale touch did indeed smooth down his back. The spill of his own tears was a shock to him. 

“Do not weep, meleth-nin,” Echoriath murmured against his temple, his body now entirely spooned with his. “I have not forsaken you.” 

“I did not think… that is, I but thought on…” he struggled to explicate, his nerves suddenly raw with need of Echoriath’s warmth. His forgiveness. “My Naneth.” 

“To speak of sacrifice,” the darkling elf acknowledged, enveloping an even more generous hold around him. 

Echoriath fell silent a stretch, his arms of ample consolation, which allowed Tathren time to center himself. The golden elf eventually wormed around to face him, a penitent gaze alighting upon solemn amber eyes. 

“Forgive me,” he essayed. “I was wrong to venture such a fateful interpretation of the prophecy without first debating the notion with you, melethron.”

“I would gladly forgive this injury,” Echoriath replied hushly. “If you would forget the notion entirely and focus on a less fatal interpretation of the scrolls.” 

“But what-“

“I will not live for supposition, nor speculation, Tathren,” he told him forthright. “The prophecy may have a milliard interpretations, and though every action we take on either allows or negates the possibility of Mandos being freed, we cannot weigh every decision in such vaulted light. We must live as we would. The Valar will provide for us, heroes or no.” He hesitated a moment, his lids downcast while he gathered his thoughts. “Have you never, in these secret reflections of yours, considered that the prophecy… may not come to pass? That we were never intended to break Mandos, that our love, though true and hotly felt, is but… coincidence? An alchemy of no great design but that of our complimenting natures, our proximity, our rearing… whatever confluence of events was required to cause us to seal ourselves as one being? Or even merely a by-product of my Maian wiles?” 

Tathren could not help a smirk at this, though the argument did quite readily provoke him. 

“Nay,” he admitted. “To my eyes, the portents were ever clear, though the manner of their resolution mayn’t be. Though there is merit to your concerns…” 

Echoriath eagerly continued: “The Laurelins want their savior, meleth, and those in Telperion, our dearly kin included, want peace among elfkind, but the desperation of these factions does not make us instruments of the divine. Indeed, I have held little care for these predictions since you made them known to me. My needs are humble: an open field to build upon, the sanctity of my expanded family, swordbrothers to second me… a husband’s reverent regard. *Your* love, maltaren-nin, and yours alone, until the Valar stop time and the world itself wafts into ether.” The darkling elf gulped back a ragged breath, his amber eyes chilled copper with sadness. “I know I cannot keep you from this bold gesture of yours, melethron. Though I do not consent, I neither demand you similarly abide by your oath of love to me. Our bond is not a cage, but a river… a constant flow between us. As such, however, I would that you entertain two requests of mine.” 

“Most gladly, my dearest one,” Tathren agreed, kissing him tenderly to seal his promise. “I would most heartily ease your mind.” 

“Well, then,” Echoriath smiled faintly, though not yet convinced his caveats would be met with swift compliance. “First, I would that you return your copy of Idril’s prophetic scrolls to Erestor and demand that he forbid any from their perusal, until their contents have come to pass.” 

“Happily, melethron,” Tathren vowed. “And I will do my utmost to forget I ever perused their fractious verses. My peredhil mind should aid you readily in their expulsion. In twenty years, their very existence will be wiped clean from my memory.” 

Even Echoriath could not swallow a grin at this gentle, though honest, merriment. “Then we should never be parted more than ten, nin bellas, for my own heart’s assurance.”

“And the second?” Tathren inquired, barely stifling a yawn. His fatigue had caught up with him, now that reconciliation was palpably near. He snuggled further into Echoriath’s too silken embrace, ready to drift contently off, once he’d accepted his final amendment. 

“That I be allowed to stand guard with our company,” Echo whispered, his voice suddenly ripe with cutting fear. “While you lunch with Thranduil.” Tathren bit his tongue to stave off an instinctive dissent, waiting instead to heed his beloved’s oft-sage reasoning. “I could not bear tense, endless hours occupied in some vain activity, whist my beloved traffics with such a tyrant. I would be at hand, attuned to your moods, your myriad emotions, so I might sense when true danger threatens.” 

“But what tenor of danger would a lover’s heart not deem true?” Tathren delicately objected, already sensing the rigidity of his beloved’s normally supple back. 

“I would not come unless you openly called for me,” Echoriath insisted. “The ruse itself is of such fragile making than any interruption might anger him. I would not put you in such peril unless…summoned.” Though Tathren’s face shone with deeply felt sympathy, his aqua eyes were yet conflicted, his mind weighing reason against his lover’s needs of assurance. Echo’s blood ran crisp as ice at the thought of his denial of so simple a request, such that he was compelled to plead his case from the very recesses of his heart. “Tathren, if you cross swords… if he bests you… I cannot be away!!! I cannot bear the thought of you passing from this realm without my arms to cradle you in your last moments, my eyes to hearten you, my kiss to warm your way to the Halls of Waiting! If I am to somehow bear your passing, I must shepherd you, meleth-nin, melethron-nin, into Mandos’ very arms, else I will fade the very instant your hora turns entirely cold. You cannot keep me from a last caress, my most cherished one… if we have shared any love at all, you will not forbid my spirit this quiescent vigil.” 

The ardor of Echoriath’s incandescent eyes wrecked him so thoroughly, Tathren could naught but give in. 

“We have but barely begun to share our love, Echo-nin,” Tathren swore to him, sealing their pact with a bond-mate’s kiss. “I would have no other shepherd to Mandos, or throughout eternity.” 

* * * 

He streaked through the high grass as stealthily as a viper through the nettles, black cloak whipping invisibly overground, a hissing swish behind him. Never had he witnessed such an ominous midsummer night in this somnambulant vale. The dank, frigid air, the fog of cinder-clouds above, and the faraway mountain fuming red as an forge hammer remembered him a time, a merciless place he’d sooner abolish from his mind: the seething plains of Mordor itself. 

He came to the river. To his battle-ready eyes, the inky rush poured through the field like orc’s blood. He had not been so violently charged, so resigned to conflict since that fateful day of the Shadow’s fall, of his heraldic son’s birth. Though he could never ‘scape the warrior within, in the subsequent years of peace he thought he’d banished the bedeviled memories of the Ring War; molted the scales of his inner-slayer on the shores of Arda, sacrificed this second skin to the carnage-rich earth of Gondor. Yet here again circumstance forced him to be fanged with slit knives, stalk through the midnight plain and prey in a panther’s ebony mantle. 

To hunt the elusive, tyrannous quarry presently known to elfkind. 

Despite the council’s fugue-headed conclusions, he knew this task to be his alone. The chain of events had begun with the first spark of his conception, the arrogance of a king flamed by both his incendiary love for his wife and the terrible threat to his people. With such dubious intent had he been created, the very color of his hair fashioned as if by the Valar’s own ethereal light, but none born of such grandiose designs could be a savior pure and true. He was reared in a quiver climate of bow, brawn, and webbing-strewn bracken, of dissimulation and of trenchant deceit. The Shadow itself had delivered him from blind obedience to a power-mad father; Celebrian’s torture was his honor’s accidental salvation, Elrohir’s injury caused his eventual exposure to clear, golden righteousness. 

To love, in all its maddening, mysterious hues. 

The beacon of this other’s ever-constant heart had guided him, guarded him through perils untold, a wood-elf’s scathing bouts of weakness, reticence, obstinacy, and rancor. His giving light had burned through the princely fetters that restricted him and had fired the heroic nature his begetter had aspired to. Unlike the King of Mirkwood’s belligerent dedication to the cause above all other consideration, this lover had revealed to him the bounty of the world they hoped to save, dared him to experience the utmost bliss and thereby suffer the agony of its impending immolation. If Mirkwood had made him a fighter, his elf-knight had made him a survivor. Yet the miracle of their son, which had made him so loathsome to his very creator despite him being the product of his own machinations, had trenched in him a well from which he derived the greatest source of pride, of achievement, more so than even his participation in the Fellowship of the Ring.

He was now a caregiver. 

After loving his husband into an unimpeachable slumber, he had longly debated the merits of his present action, cocooned in their hotbed embrace. He was impressed by his own hesitation; it was, in itself, evidence of Elrohir’s beneficial influence in his life. In being acutely aware of the consequences, he was also cognizant of the stakes, of the precious value of what he might forsake this night and of the desperate reasons for such forbearance. He cherished this mate, this family, this life, with a dedication his own father had never known and could never have taught him. On the eve of war, he had vowed to sacrifice himself for their security. He would do no less tonight. 

Yet the necessary secrecy of his stealing away chastened him considerably. He had lingered perhaps too long by their bed, watching Elrohir’s eyelids flutter through rosy dreams, holding the scroll of farewell troths he would perhaps discover upon waking. He had kissed him almost too many times, barely swooping away before his tears inadvertently roused him. He had despaired that Mandos would rob him of his lifetime’s remembrances, blunt the torment of the passing millennia by dulling his mind. He had struggled against the grating urge to see his children one last time, but feared the sight of his sweetly dormant little ones would stay him till dawn. 

Tathren’s face, however, would have only solidified his will in this. The thought of his golden son coming to harm fuelled his resolve. Silently snaking his way over to the embankment, he deftly sprung from stone to jutting stone, until he landed on the far bank, beyond the borders of their realm. His guardsmen slovenly sprawled around a pile of embers, little skill would be required in breaching the largest tent, into which the king had already retired for the night. He scoured the compound for any sign of troublesome interruption, then dared a steeling intake of breath.

By the red, Rohirric dawn, he will have claimed his birthright. 

*

The implacable eyes that peered up, at his quiet entrance, were surprisingly moved by the sight of him, yet they did not for a moment retreat. Though unbidden, he strode brashly over to the ridiculously ornate table and took a lofty seat directly across from the gruff king, who despite himself took obvious appraisal of him. The regent could not conceal the pride that swelled his irises a translucent aquamarine, from their usual furtive indigo. Legolas swallowed back a bitter mouth of indignation at his gall, that such bejeweled, brilliant eyes as his sire’s were blind to the true, inner beauty of his land, of his people, and of his youngest son. 

“Mae govannen,” Thranduil pointedly welcomed him. “To what do I owe this most unexpected intrusion?” 

“To little more than my benevolence,” Legolas repliqued tartly, his own eyes dagger-spiked. “I carry in my quiver two poisoned arrows, unknowing which will strike clean. The first comes in the form of ill-tidings, the second a potent ultimatum. I would presently make my case, if you would hear me.”

Thranduil raptly examined his staid features for some indication of the matter of these black tidings. Finding naught but an unforgiving stare, he was not fool enough to speak hastily. A master strategist, he knew instantly he could not penetrate his son’s long-practiced defenses. This was not the starry-eyed youngling he’d so mistakenly ensorcelled, this was an elf of poise, purpose, and no paltry gift of majesty, though Legolas himself would rather be flayed alive than admit to this flair of his character. This elf was a seasoned warrior, a pilgrim, and a sire in his own right. 

Better and braver than either of his elder brothers, this elf was of Oropher’s line, of crown-worthy honor, of his blazing seed. 

*His* son, above all. 

Thranduil took a generous draught from his waiting goblet, then licked the crimson brine off his snarling lips. 

“Tis pity you will take no wine,” he commented wryly. “This particular vintage is quite savory.” 

“I’ll have my treachery served cold, by your grace,” Legolas sharply replied. “And your answer forthwith.” 

“Tell of your tidings,” Thranduil ordered him. “Keep your ultimatum. A bargain cannot be struck with one who possesses naught of interest, Legolas, or have I at last come upon some trinket to lure your fair-weather attentions?” 

“I confess, I am covetous,” Legolas taunted him. “Of your retreat to Laurelin and your vow to never return.” 

The resulting snort came with no little flair, even from one of Thranduil’s feral sobriety. 

“You disappoint me, nin bellas,” he eventually remarked. “I assumed your peredhil consort had instructed you in the wheedling arts of enigmatic debate.”

“I anticipated such arts would have no effect on a crude Sinda monarch,” Legolas retorted. “I do not dally in niceties when faced by such a brute.” 

“If tis compliance you seek, ioneth,” Thranduil icily responded. “Then best you not rile against your own kind.” 

“I am of elfkind,” Legolas emphasized. “And you, *Adar*, are keen to distract me with such hotpoint jibes, but no longer. I bring tidings from my naneth, the fair and goodly Laurelith.” 

“From Laurë?” Thranduil started, quite visibly stifling a tremor of dread. He straightened in his seat to further empower himself, but inwardly fortified against the coming blow. He reminded himself of how attuned this wily son was to his few, but affecting vulnerabilities. “I caution you, Legolas, to recall who twas who taught you to wreck such furious vengeance. He will not be so easily bested.” 

With keen, piercing eyes, Legolas reached into the fold of his tunic and extracted a tiny pouch. He tossed this across the sleek surface of the table, through the king scoffed at his stealth tactics. He piqued a defiant brow, then pawed open the laces, his simmering stare never leaving his son’s impassive face. Unimpressed, he dumped out the meager contents, only to gape, quite undignified in his utter shock, at the shimmering necklace spilled across veneered wood. 

Rather than flare with unbound ire, his heart sank into his entrails, as if made of the inviolate mithril that laced through the delicate leaf pendant before him. His gift to his beauteous wife, upon Legolas’ very begetting day. The first fallen leaf of autumn immortalized forever; for the one who had birthed his own little green leaf. The charm she clung to as she was so mercilessly slain, wore beneath her robes, symbol of their undying bond. She had exited Mandos with the necklace around her slender neck, the pendant stuck over her heart. He had marked its fierce glimmer, when at last he had found her again, upon the blessed shores of Laurelin; been caught by its shine as he knew her again, his fallen wife, his lost mate, his eternal love.

Now returned to him. 

By courier, no less. 

“Nana said you would not mistake its significance,” Legolas told him, without the expected menace. “Nor its portent. She has chosen to remain with her sons, in Telperion.” 

Thranduil growled under his broiling breath, his teeth dripping with the vivid taste of rage. Barely conscious of the need to restrain himself, to meet this impudent son with full, potent majesty; this urged him to snatch up his goblet, gulp down a sour mouthful, then force his hand to rest the wrought metal base on the table surface with a hummingbird’s grace. That he accomplished this without a finger’s quiver was testament alone to his colossal will. 

“And your ultimatum?” he seethed, but gave the fiend before him his entire attention. 

Legolas’ baleful stare bore not a trace of his renown mercury, though he was no doubt tempted to toy with his raw, riled father. Instead, he promptly unsheathed his broadsword, setting the deadly weapon across the table between them and offering the hilt to the fuming king. Thranduil did not flinch, though he was, for a fleeting moment, intrigued. 

“Two paths diverge before you, Adar,” Legolas calmly explained. “One swift, to the vengeance you have such intimate knowledge of and with which you seduce your cur-hearted minions. The other, a pitiless, unforgiving journey towards redemption, but also back into my mother’s graces and perhaps, in considerable time, her heart. As you once so arrogantly told me, this choice will be the making of you. It will either condemn or renew your spirit, though neither result is assured.” 

“Spare me your gloating, child,” he tersely grunted, his dark eyes hungry for retribution. “Give me my choice.” 

Legolas nodded, with such patience that the king almost pounced, then continued: “My mother’s heart is not entirely cold, but yet she cannot abide by your treatment, during her absence and in these recent years, of your once cherished sons. Your atonement must be dedicated, immediate, and without objection, else she will herself climb to the summit of Tanitequil and petition the Valar to dissolve your bond. You are to return to Laurelin this very dawn, tarrying in Valimar if you must to await your rallied supporters, and remain there until the frontier is properly tamed. Upon satisfactory establishment of a residence and town for each and every inhabitant, ensuring the constant and unabated quality of their life, and after ten years of government, you may absent yourself long enough to seek audience with the Valar, who will pass their terrible judgment upon you. Once this task of their choosing is complete, you may begin to court her again, as well as work to earn the forgiveness of your children, and perhaps even solicit the company of your grandchildren.” 

Thranduil chuckled with genuine mirth at this absurd suggestion, then demanded: “The alternative?” 

“You may finished what was so wrongheadedly begun,” Legolas declared boldly, without a trace of fear. “In exchange for the sanctity of my children and those of my brothers’ seed, present and future, I offer you… a feast of vengeance upon me. I give you my sword. Strike as you would, I will not defend myself.”

“*Legolas*,” he huffed, but could rouse no breath to his usual bluster. 

“The choice is before you, Adar,” Legolas underlined darkly. “An unbreakable commitment to redemption, or my eternal life for a solemn oath to keep away from my kindred.”

“And what if I renege on this bloody pact of ours?!” Thranduil spit back at him, the inconceivable terms braising his kept countenance. “What if I take your life with relish, then charge your children the moment after?” 

“Then even my beatific naneth cannot spare you from my husband’s blade,” Legolas swore with chilling severity. “Nor from her goodly petition, which will immediately go forth. Nor from the Valar’s timely intervention. You are not shroud by the Mirkwood here, Adar. Though this be the Blessed Realm, you will suffer as none before. Say nothing of your lost kingdom, your lost power, your lost children and wife.” 

“Do you think me so witless as to break you?” Thranduil bellowed, unable to further contain his fury. “How am I to win back my wife with such blood on my hands?” 

“The thrill of vengeance has its sensory allures,” Legolas cunningly reminded him. “There are alternative forms of satisfaction. Tis this one I offer you. It should warm enough to bear through a few decades of solitude.” He shrugged off the burden so easily, Thranduil was almost proud of him. “Besides, certainly one of your scheming ways can spin a suitable veil over the truth. My cloak hood was raised when your guards struck. They knew not who they slew, but that he threatened their king. You can keep our secret, savor it as your own. Know that you finally triumphed over my wretched diplomacy.” 

“A wretched business, indeed,” Thranduil grumbled. “One would think your Noldo spouse had a hand in it, though even he is not so basely formed as to feed his mate to the wolves.”

“A compliment, Adar?” Legolas riled him. “You’ve grown soft in your dotage.” 

“Not so soft as to act rashly,” the king impressed upon him. “Nor to spare you, should I chose vengeance.” Without a word, Legolas loosened the ties of his tunic and opened his collar wide, offering his love-bitten throat as proof of his sincerity. Thranduil remained unreadable, though determined to provoke him. “And what of this Son of Elrond? What of these babes you cherish so? Tell me, ioneth, for my own betterment, how can you abandon them so carelessly to fate?” 

“I would give anything for them,” Legolas proclaimed, his eyes hard. “Even my life, if it would spare them a greater grief. They will know, when they come of age, of my sacrifice. They will know the depth and ardor of my love, even from Mandos itself.” 

“I suspect they may all follow you there,” Thranduil teased him, with a menacing playfulness. “When they learn of your fall.” 

“Jealous, Adar?” Legolas retorted, striking clean. “I have not come for merriment, nor for your sickly pleasures. My message is delivered and I would have my answer.” 

In an instant, the king kicked back his chair, swiped hold of the sword, and stood imperiously above him, the blade poised but inches from his neck.

“Who are you to make such brazen demands of the one who gave you life?!” he roared, unleashing the very element of his rage upon him. “To dangle an impossible choice before me like a carrot before a dull-witted horse?! I am the King of Greenwood the Great, a Sinda King, son of Oropher who fell in the Last Alliance, ruler in this Blessed Realm, and the very seed who grew your overbold, ungrateful self. I made you what you are, child, and I need no word, pact, nor challenge of yours to end what I have wrought!!” 

At this, Legolas also leapt up, steady and strong before the tide of bile Thranduil spewed forth. 

“Then finish it!!” he hissed, pushing ever closer to the sure blade. “Finish me.”

Thranduil needed not be affronted by Legolas’ dry, ready eyes to know his mind. He glared at his insurgent son with sizzling disgust, at the green leaf hanging so perilously from the bough, from the last of its neck-stem, so feeble before him, so wasteful of the life, of the legacy bequeathed him.

He had made his choice. 

* * *

Elrohir was wrenched awake, his spine seized with a sharp sting of tension. 

Panting lightly, he pushed up onto his elbows and peered into the blackness. Twined amidst sweat-sodden sheets veritably molded to his sinuous frame, the night chill pricked the length of his exposed chest, which only more keenly alerted his warrior’s instincts. His bed was barren of elflings, which he swiftly recalled was for good reason, but more disturbingly, his mate was also missing. Shaking any last wooziness from his mind, he studied the darkest depths of the shadows about his bedchamber for a gleam refracted off moist eyes, a pale slice of cheekbone, a strand of shimmering flaxen hair caught by the faint glow of their garden torches though the window. 

He found no trace of his sterling husband, not about the shadows nor in the considerable expanse of back yard visible from their terrace door. There were, however, a flurry of lights in the distance, buzzing like tiny fleets of feeflies even through the thick glass of the pane. Wondering at this strange happenstance, that Legolas had perhaps been called away and not thought to warn him even in such a sated sleep as his, Elrohir hastened to wrap himself in a velvety robe and threaded the sash as he drifted into the hall. 

He followed the acrid scent of burning parchment into his study, where a small fire popped and cracked in the hearth. A sternly posed elf stood in spectral silhouette before the cool yellow flames, clothed and cloaked entirely in black, save for a long, golden braid that slithered over his far shoulder. His senses overwhelmed by both the pungent fire and the dimness of the room, he did not recognize the elf, until he was but a few strides behind him. 

None could mistake the love-bite in the crease behind his peaked ear. 

“Melethron?” Elrohir announced himself, touching Legolas lightly on the arm so as not to startle him. 

His husband managed a lonely smile, welcomed his embrace. Though the archer’s arms wove dotingly around him, his tunic was yet wet with dew and his cheeks braised by the wind. Elrohir was not pleased by his unexpected absence, but Legolas was so wearied from his adventuring that he could not whole-heartedly keep from cottoning to him. 

“Did the ruckus outdoors disturb you, meleth-nin?” Legolas queried, softing a kiss over his lips. “I instructed them to keep to the far path.” 

“Why did you not wake me, when called away?” Elrohir asked, still somewhat unnerved by his sudden disappearance. “I may have needed rest, Legolas, but I *cannot* rest peacefully when I wake to a uncommonly empty bed.”

“Forgive me, dearest one,” he whispered, stopping his gentle protests with a deep, loving caress. “You slept so soundly, I was loathe to disturb you. In truth, I was not called away, but awoken myself by faraway voices. I sought out their cause. The Laurelin elders are decamping as we speak. They leave for Valimar with the dawn, where the king awaits to lead them north.”

“Thranduil is abandoning his mate here, without protest?” Elrohir verily gaped in astonishment. “How can this be?” 

“I fear my brothers had a hand in it,” Legolas hushly suggested. “Though I doubt they will admit any such complicity.”

“Nay, they are too proud,” Elrohir agreed, turning pensive even as his husband drew him ever close. Legolas buried his drowsy head into the crook of his neck, drinking in his sleep-heavy scent with a low moan. “I trust you were careful enough not to light up our most cherished tales?” 

“I was cold,” Legolas mumbled into his collar. “But I was indeed cautious. Twas a notice from the king that I burnt.” 

“Was it foul?” Elrohir queried playfully. “An endless pontification on our injurious, heathen ways?” 

Legolas chuckled some, but without his usual mirth at such gests. 

“Nay,” he sighed, lifting his face to address his mate directly. “Twas rather brief. He commands us to trouble him no more, and for none of any kith or kin to seek shelter nor sanctuary in the north. The elders would fare as they will, and not be disturbed by ungrateful upstarts of slight age and slighter wits.” 

“Your sire is a poet at heart,” Elrohir further taunted. “Did you mark well the potent meter? The remarkable scheme of the rhyme?” 

Legolas smirked wryly, but ignored his smart mouth in favor of suckling its plump lips. Elrohir could not deny that the missive had struck to his husband’s oft fragile heart – where sire-minded matters gravely concerned – so he offered him the peerless consolation of his arms, his heady, balming kisses. Yet as he grazed sensuous hands up his neck, to tenderly cup that devastatingly fair face, a rather unguent wetness spread across his fingertips. He quickly broke off, when he spied their scarlet stain. 

“Legolas, you’ve been struck!” he gasped, instantly bending his head aloft to examine the wound. 

“Tis but a scratch, melethron,” the archer reassured him. Upon closer appraisal, the sword-slit had indeed clotted nicely, though the application of some medicinal cream would aid some in its mending. “As I dressed in the darkness, I marked not the somber colors of my raiment. I surprised one of the elders, springing out from the black as I did.”

“I have a mind to upbraid you as one of our mischievous elflings, bereth-nin,” Elrohir harrumphed good-naturedly. “But as you seem fit to faint in my arms, lest you fall into a bed soon, I will instead lure you into the sanctity of our bedchamber and curl us beneath the downy coverlet.” 

“Aye, some Elrohirian warmth will suit me well,” Legolas smiled, with opulent affection. “I feel as if I have traveled to Arda and back again, meleth-nin, across a breadth of vast, ominous ocean, to a fierce and hostile land. But I am returned to you, nin ind.” Nearly breathless, listless with fatigue, he added, “I love you so, my star-rider.” 

“Come, then, my brave, valorous one,” Elrohir murmured, as the exhausted archer sunk anew into his embrace. “Let me warm you as only a true lover could.”

 

End of Part Fifteen


	16. Part 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Preparations are made for the cousins’ union.

Part Sixteen

One year later

The night was as gentle as a gelding in the meadow, the air around breezy light for such a late summer’s eve. Elves of all tribes fluttered like hummingbirds about the ale hall, their flimsy robes, loose sheathes of hair, and tipsy attitudes coloring the flirty, rosy atmosphere. Scantily clad maids lounged by the reflecting pool, their dainty toes tippling the surface of the shallow, translucent waters, whose jaunty waves were scattered with lavender sprigs, amarinth petals, and calla lilies. Bands of roguish Laurelin builders lay shirtless about the cold hearth, displaying their considerable wares with the arrogance of the young, randy, and boastful, shooting wicked-eyed glances towards the maidens between rowdy hoists of their galleon goblets. Councilors of both Noldo and Sinda sway held court at the eight corner tables of the octagonal building, their minions ruddy with drink, their conversation both bullish and bawdy. Off-duty marchwardens guarded the wine vats as a dwarf might his mithril store, while the minstrels deftly kept up the merry mood with wood pipes, flutes, dueling lyres, and a magnificent harp, though it was deemed too humid yet for spirited dancing. Most were content to sprawl about with their friends, sipping a fine vintage and telling tall tales. 

Such heady, nonchalant ambiance strongly reminded Echoriath of so many nights in Gondolen, late in their time there, when the guildhalls were aflood with eccentrics, pacifists, rabid-eyed philosophers who sought to both spiritually convert and to bodily conquer the Valinor-born ingénues that also abounded there. His efforts to erect a Laurelin settlement to the west had attracted some of the same nomads to the vale; though the hardy builders were most welcome, despite their rakishness, those with more piquant political leadings chafed the Sindar such that most were forced to camp on the outskirts, as Telperion itself was a secure stronghold of the Lord Elrond and they were not fool enough to dare Glorfindel’s tinder-hearted legion. This particular hall, in the grove between Sindar and Noldor districts, was renown for its diversity, equanimity, and also its revolutionary contingents. 

The noble houses, however, had to promote harmony between elven peoples. Since their imminent binding would be a private, humble affair, their companions had chosen this hotbed location for their farewell to bachelorhood, in the thick of tribal tensions, jealous suitors, and those that would usurp their distinguished grandsire without a care. Echoriath was most grateful for the mildness of the night, though the gall of other singletons never ceased to astonish him. In keeping with tradition, available elves were allowed, on this night of revels, a final attempt to lure the prospective mates apart. Overt action was frowned upon, but likely lads and ladies might offer a drink, a dance, or a saucy kiss on the cheek. For the beloved one or his intended to refuse was considered a black omen on their future union, so both had to politely endure this ritual without protest, wry comment, or even the most innocuous riposte. Echoriath, resigned to the inevitability of this rather pathetic custom, had calmly accommodated the near incessant interruptions from both male and maid alike, his cheeks swollen crimson from their overindulgent culls and his companions well plied by the overabundance of drink in his cup. 

Needless to say, if it were not for the equally voluminous flow of wine into his own deep-bellied goblet, Tathren would by now have emasculated many of the ellon and mortally insulted many of the ellyth. With each tap on Echo’s shoulder, Elostrion forced Tathren to take another longly draught, though the potent spirits did little to dull the flint in his simmering eyes. To Echoriath’s great chagrin, he would not even benefit from the rousing of his betrothed’s volatile Sinda blood, since they had vowed to abstain from relations for three - by now nearly endless – months before their binding rites, to ensure that night of nights would be the most rapturous of their enflamed history together. 

The promise of that visceral, shining night, of the eternal mingling of their passions, bloods, souls prompted him to sit across from his beloved, the considerable diameter of their round table between them and their swordbrothers collected around. Cuthalion kept tight to his right flank, a steady hand ever-pressed to the small of his back. Though their fathers had most gratefully absented themselves, their company had come out in force: the twins Cirith and Rohros, blustery Thorontir, a love-tempered Glinfalas, goodly Elostrion, and even Mithbrethil, who had pledged vigilance over Tathren after such ample ablutions. 

They had been feasted in the barracks before this outing, where even the tiny triplets had been present, terribly eager to spend some time among the adventurers and to celebrate along with their hallowed older brother. Already in their fifth year, they would begin exercises in the fall to heighten their speed, agility, and coordination, so Tathren thought even a fleeting glimpse of warrior culture might entice them. Echoriath doubted he would ever forget their saucer eyes and gaping mouths at the company’s unrestrained behavior, where curses flew, jibes grazed, and insinuations were at times hotly explicit. The trio had nevertheless survived with their innocence mostly intact, so gleeful at their unexpected admittance to the affair that they barely marked the adult tone. 

Valar only knew how Elrohir and Legolas managed to sing them to sleep this night. 

As yet another foolhardy ellon tipped Tathren’s head back and stole a ready kiss from his cheek, Echoriath – leagues away from outright jealousy – instead envied the elf’s good fortune in being able to suckle such deliciously flush skin. His beloved was dressed in softer hues than was his usual custom, fawn-colored suede breeches and a tight-fitting tunic of sea green. The silken sheathes of his luminous gold hair were caught by only the loosest of clasps, the wisps framing his face gave an effect at once delicate and devastating. Echoriath himself, by contrast, veritably oozed a feebly repressed sensuality, in maroon leather breeches that left naught of his virility to the imagination, high, leg-sculpting boots, and a lush, low-cut burgundy shirt cinched by a sable vest. His powers of seduction well matured in the last decade of their togetherness, he had wanted to seduce his beloved with the surety of one steeped in the secret lore of his heart, of Tathren’s private needs, key lures, most piquing preferences. Emboldened by his lover’s meticulous bed-play lessons over ten incomparable years, he wanted him to crave his touch as never before, to be sick with longing, to suffer his lust, to burn at the very mention of his name and to be nightly embroiled in braising, lascivious dreams of him. 

He wanted his love-teacher to learn hotly well how thoroughly versed his keen student was, thanks to his tender care.

When first they’d greeted each other that eve, Tathren had barely been able to release him; indeed, his steel-fingered grip had scored welts into his hard biceps. Though he had not dared a kiss, as even a taste of those savory lips might shame him like an adolescent elfling but weeks before his majority, his hawk eyes repeatedly raked the length of him with predatory intent. Once at table, the golden elf had consumed an entire pitcher of wine without right pause or the rest of a true breath, but Echo knew it would take a fountain of spirits to permanently dampen Tathren’s desire, when so relentlessly provoked. He relished how skillfully he could now unravel his beloved, how despite the temptations about his unyielding sapphire eyes stayed fixed on him alone, whether stung by inadvertent jealousy, smoldering with unanswerable need, or beaming with sheer, immaculate love. 

Though this night he amused himself with playing the provocateur, Echoriath was not even barely immune to Tathren’s burnished beauty. The wine did little to smite his own raving desire, nor did the cloying leather breeches. While he doubted his ability to stand without aid, his did not doubt the resulting friction would wrought his loins to full, aching potency; this alone kept him seated and swallowing back yet another round. As the evening wore on, his companions wore out all their planned distractions; if they did not act decisively, and soon, Tathren might before long pounce across the table and take him over its very top – which at this woozy-headed instant, he would more than ardently give in to. As desperately as Echoriath longed for his peerless touch, he was equally besotted by affection for him, as evidenced by the glowing amber eyes he now shone over him. Tathren’s own bejeweled gaze gratefully mated with his own; in truth, they were as drunk off the other’s loving regard as they were by the bucketfuls of wine they’d consumed. 

Thorontir, as wily as he was windy, at once recognized the perilous circumstance and moved ably towards distraction. 

“The hour has grown late, gwador,” he announced to Tathren. “And we are sodden with our revels. Before we take a final swig and pledge again our undying allegiance, will you not, in these darkly hours when the moon is on high, regale us with a sultry tale or two from your much renown escapades of yore? And I mean not your adventures in the glittering caves, meldir.” 

“Aye, Tathren,” Cirith smirked salaciously. “Oft have we heard told wildly amplified tales of your minority’s loss, or your seduction of the Gondor prince, but never from your own lips.” 

“To speak of such dalliances with a bound elf courts the Valar’s displeasure,” Elostrion seconded. “Will you not appease our curiosity this once? The hall is emptying…” 

Tathren bristled some at the suggestion, looked considerately towards Echoriath. 

“I care not to slight my beloved,” he replied, with such brevity the entire company groaned, though Cuthalion did not join them. “Those tales are best left on another shore. In Aman, I have known but one dearly heart.” 

“And if this heart is not offended by the conjuring of your romantic history?” Echoriath insisted. “But in fact quite curious himself, as he has been given only the barest sketch, the most vital facts of these scarlet encounters.” The table cheered his generosity, though Cuthalion yet glowered some, ever protective of his brother’s interests. Tathren, for his part, was rather impressed by his beloved’s confidence, though knew well he had no cause to fear any such tales, especially when balanced against a night’s worth of gropes from strange, covetous elves. “Indeed, if I myself cannot be put soundly to bed this night, perhaps in their emphatic recounting, you might do so to any lingering memory of your embroilment with these now elusive former lovers.” 

 

“Well argued, young master,” Glinfalas shrewdly noted.

“Aye, you’d do well to mark his wisdom,” Rohros added snarkily. “And satisfy all our inquiring minds.” 

Tathren grinned dryly at this, his manner easing: “Very well. Perhaps I’d best be myself appraised of the exaggerated versions you’ve somehow caught wind of. Where shall I begin, o my brothers?” 

“With the loss of your innocence,” Elostrion dove right in. “I have heard that your Dunedain kin so worshipped your elven grace and so misunderstood the slow development of an elfling into maturity that they hired a small harem of courtesans to sate you, whilst you journeyed with them, and you thus met your majority years before your time.”

The table verily quaked with laughter at this preposterous hyperbole, none more than Tathren himself. 

“Valar, how these gossipy whisperings do roar through the ages,” he quipped, before setting the matter straight. “In truth, it was agreed upon that, following my first majority, I might be allowed to visit my mother’s Dunedain clan for a few years, to better know the manly half of myself. My Nana, however, aged quicker than was supposed she would and could not wait another decade to rejoin her clan, so my fathers decided that this visitation should occur four years before my majority, while my mother could still travel without pain or injury.” Afraid that, in his intoxication, the memories of his naneth that came with the recounting of this tale might turn him maudlin, he halted a moment. The table, however, was rapt with interest, and their avid eyes urged him onwards. “I was, as any mature elf can attest of his own experience, at that time constantly aflame. By day, in the company of females, I fumbled to restrain my flash-point desires from embarrassing emergence; by night, I was besotted by scarlet dreams. Though I was attracted to both genders, I was too much of a warrior to allow any rogue thought of my swordbrothers to penetrate. I concentrated instead on the lovely ellyth of Imladris, who were thankfully as serene as they were untouchable. Among mankind, however… the scent of the women was maddening. There were few young men in the clan, but there was a bevy of fragrant, fair-faced girls, whose innocuous attentions left my loins in unrelenting agony. I experienced want such as never before, and to add to my troubles, they were only too brazen to constantly flirt, tease, or create the most shaming of situations. For months, I suffered their giddy torments, stealing away to the river every chance I could for some small measure of relief. Worse still, my Nana insisted I sleep near her, in the women’s tents, in case she felt poorly. Between keeping vigil over her and staving off my so very lusty dreams, I barely slept for the better part of a year.”

“If only we all could be so afflicted, gwador,” Cirith further taunted him, to the great amusement of the assembled company. 

“I am no innocent myself, to be entirely fair,” Tathren remarked. “I have tormented my share, through the years. Yet verily, I believe this time is perhaps what swayed my more loving desires towards males.”

“Happily so,” Echoriath winked at him, then gestured for him to continue. 

“Most happily,” Tathren agreed, but did not tarry on this point. “After some months of nomadic life, we came to their base camp, in the north, where most of my manly kin resided. I was thankfully given my own tent and occupied most of the day with my cousins. Yet… or so I was later told… the girls that had journeyed there with our pack were apparently engaged in a fierce competition over who could seduce me soonest.” Tathren ignored the snorts that sounded at this declaration, rather proud himself of the knowledge. “One night, a maid of their comely ranks snuck into my tent, woke me with the kisses I’d only ever dreamed of, and without yielding to my protests, bared herself. She slipped into my furs and made quick business of my night shirt. I was so roused by the merest stroke of her fingers over my skin that I could not in any mind deny her. When she understood that I was innocent, though surprised, she was quite tender with me, and returned for some nights after to teach me some basic skills. She soon, and rather carelessly, confessed of the competition. To my own great regret, I was too emboldened by this news of my comeliness and too eager to practice my new skills with all and sundry to learn of proper courtship, as well. Soon after she broke with me, having tired of one so green, I attempted a seduction of another sweetly maid on a feast night. I discovered then that I needed not even exert myself in their seduction; I only needed intimate that we might couple, kiss them some, and they were mine.” Tathren grew somber with the memory, though his friends were fascinated. “I treated some quite heartlessly, ignoring their advances once they’d been had. Twas not wise to give myself so liberally, and without an elder elf’s proper instruction. If I had the moment to do again, I would have chosen... another path… But that is the true, sordid tale of my Dunedain harem.” 

“You had them all, then?” Thorontir grinned knowingly. 

“Aye,” Tathren admitted, blushing despite himself. “I was, sadly, a wanton thing. Though shortly after my return to Ithilien, I lost my heart to a swordbrother, who did not return my affections and thereby learnt a proper lesson.” 

“While we maid-lovers about are frothing with envy,” Rohros countered mirthfully. “Tyrant.” 

“But what of the Crown Prince of Gondor?” his twin pressed on. “I have heard such weirded versions as to not bear recounting.” 

Tathren’s smile dissipated at this particularly trenchant memory, as word had recently reached the vale that Eldarion was on his deathbed and his son had succeeded to the throne. 

“Ask me what you will of the others,” Tathren responded, sharpened by sadness. “But my liaison with the prince remains rightly between us alone.” 

Casting a solemn stare towards Echoriath for support, he found only a barely veiled anxiety in his amber eyes. He shut his own, to center himself, then let go the floodgates of his dammed heart and poured all his repressed feeling into the otherworld. He heard Echo gasp, swallow hard, and was answered by a wave of emotion so intense, so warming, that Tathren felt his cheeks flare from the after-fumes. 

When he again looked upon his beloved, his eyes blazed.

“Did you love him, then?” Elostrion asked quietly. Tathren foist an angry glare upon him, but was tempered by his concern. 

He answered honestly, “I know not.” 

Soft eyes flickered back to Echoriath, who was by now lazing against his weary brother, drink having finally dulled his wits to drowsiness. Yet the heat that enveloped him, coursed within him, had not abated, but gentled to an ever constant, ethereal caress. Echo’s skin had grown radiant as starshine from these cosmic exertions, he appeared glutted by the affection that engulfed him. His heart-flow spoke what his lips could not, what was forbidden on such a night and even in such dear company. 

“But there is none I love so well as that comely elf across the way,” Tathren amended, as Cuthalion made movements to extricate them from the table.

“Tis but your reflection you mark in my eyes, beauteous one,” Echoriath murmured, snuggling into Cuthalion’s tight hold. “Might I not embrace this golden vision, before it blurs and I find sleep?” 

“Our next embrace will be upon our binding altar, Echo-nin,” Tathren cooed to him, as Cuthalion hoisted his twin to groggy feet. “But I will meet you ere in dreams.” 

“In scarlet dreams, I’ll await you, melethron,” Echoriath vowed, waving tipsily to him. “Before the long-awaited altar of our binding. Be at peace.” 

With a smile of thorough satisfaction, he sagged against Cuthalion and feel readily asleep. 

* * * 

As a host of elves hovered about the edges of the Great Hall, aligning the seats with rapt precision, adorning the solemn pillars with garlands of regal-hued flowers, and polishing the vaulting statues of their forebears to a sterling sheen. Beneath the vaulting arch of the entrance, three pairs of sharp, obsidian eyes missed not a note of their father’s instruction, so eager were they to join the legion preparations for their elder brother’s binding rites. 

Not a flicker of mischief, nor an impudent spark alighted their black pearl eyes, as Elrohir detailed the formation in which they would descend the center aisle, the cadence of their pace and the sprightliness of their steps. Not a giggle sounded throughout his explanation, not even when he suggested they enjoy the moment, be proud yet merry, as this was an unique occasion in their lives and they should relish this honorable task appointed to them. Though rather disturbed by a quiet such as he’d never witnessed between them in their five brief years of life, Elrohir was inwardly quite pleased that they appreciated the import of the ceremony; he did not doubt their solemnity now was tribute to their intense love for their brother, as their performance at the rites would be. His parent’s heart savored the proof that, in a little more than a year’s time, Tathren had become so beloved by them, their mentor, their guardian, and their guide. 

Waiting on the outskirts of the hall, in hush admiration of the resplendent day outside, his own twin brother routinely snuck his bemused gaze away from the willow-swept path, to admire the sight of Elrohir in complicity with his three elfling sons. While there would be a milliard balmy summers to bask in; in a few swift seasons, the wilding triplets would be elflings no more, their soft, precious faces grown long and noble, as befitting those of Noldor heritage. One need only think on Elladan’s own twin sons to feel the impact of their family’s evolution. His more restrained brother was no doubt swollen with memories of the twin elflings he himself had reared – Echoriath’s darkling graces reflected by these tender ones – one of whom would, impossibly to a doting father’s mind, be wed on the morrow. The tremendous gladness, and small measure of grief, this evoked glistened in the elf-warrior’s keen silver eyes, though he himself would blame their brimming on the sparkle-sting of sun off the mithril gates. 

Elrohir beckoned him forth for a trial run, as he would stand in place of Tathren for this rehearsal; the genuine article having refused to practice for the most hallowed day of his eternity. Elrohir had indulged him in this, as in most of his ideals, though knew well how a woozy night at the ale hall had contributed to his rather romantic resolution. 

“In the part of the brave peredhil adventurer, Tathren Elrohirin Legolasion,” Elrohir declared officiously. “We have, ioneth, the most valiant warrior of the Imladrian force, Elladan Elrondion.” To his ongoing surprise, the three waved quite cutely at their uncle, but did not, as per usual, immediately pounce upon him. “Before the gates open, you may steal a quick word with your brother. This is your chance to bless him, my dear ones, and to wish him well. A most esteemed moment, pyn-neth, I advise you to carefully prepare yourselves.” The elflings nodded with a severity that could not help but tease a smirk from Elladan, their studious absorption of their father’s every point terribly endearing. “Take a chance to embrace him, then fall into position.” 

Elladan squeezed each one with enviable ardor, as rare were the times these rambunctious three gave their affections so intently, then stood tall as they formed a triangle around him. As Tathren had but only two arms, it was decided than none would walk hand in hand with him, so as to prevent the first outright battle between the trio, though their was protest enough when this was explained to them. Elrohir had wisely delegated the chore to Tathren himself, who had taken charge with all the decisiveness and compassion of a true champion. A leisurely afternoon’s swim had ultimately done wonders to convince them, in addition to the promise of a private outing with each of the three in turn, after his honey-time by the shore. Each had already spoken with him at length of their chosen activity, he and Legolas would no doubt spend the greater part of a month listening patiently to revision upon revision of their elaborate plans. 

The vow had, however, enlightened Elrohir as to a subtle shift in the triplets’ togetherness; they were not, as in earlier years, averse to spending some brief time apart, engaged in a manner entirely unique to that particular elfling’s personality. Both he and his mate had thereby resolved to themselves partake in individual outings with their sons, as a parental unit splurging on one specific child and in fatherly alone-time with a designated elfling. With the support of their extended family of too-promptly engaged guardians for the spare two, so as not to ruffle any tender feathers, the triplets would thus be encouraged to express their personal preferences and their distinct talents, as well as revel in their father’s singular attention for a short while. 

In just the last while, Elrohir had taken Ciryon to his grandsire’s vast library for a quiet afternoon of reading and of conversation, over tea. Amidst the towering stacks of books, he’d discovered an elfling thirsty for lore, as well as for his wise father’s wealth of knowledge. Though he could not yet entirely formulate the questions that stirred within him, his normally timid little one had delighted in the opportunity to select books for bedtime reading with his brothers, to peruse the more indecipherably-titled volumes with a ready intellect at hand, and to wile away the hours as audience to his beloved Ada’s recounting. This private time had allowed Ciryon to display aspects to his character Elrohir had never even suspected; for the first time he felt himself anxious for his son to grow, so that they might fully partake of each other, in conversation, in debate. Other outings, such as fruit picking in the orchards with Brithor and a visit to the mines with Rohrith, had yielded similar treasures; he had not thought it possible for his love for them to deepen, but this beginning of intimacy, of friendship between them had trenched them even further into his heart.

Legolas, needless to say, was chomping at the bit for his own chance to indulge them, once their eldest was whisked away to the shore with his bonded. 

A thought which refocused Elrohir on the task at hand. As the party wafted down the center aisle, his elflings gave their all. It was they who demanded another try, then another; all too conscious, suddenly, of their gangly, inattentive limbs. Though both Elladan and Elrohir, cautiously stifling their mirth, assured them that the crowd would enjoy them regardless, their tenacity was such that only Elrohir’s most eloquent description of the ceremony itself distracted them from their perfectionism. Elladan found their dedication all too charming, yet quite deftly collected them before the altar for the most sensitive portion of the rehearsal. 

All four parents had thought the little ones had best be carefully forewarned of the blood rite that was to take place, as their proximity to the event would cause some concern. Elladan had gone so far as to procure the ceremonial dagger, the unsheathing of which widened their eyes considerably. As Elrohir calmly and intricately explicated the meaning of the gesture, he offered his open palm to his twin, who demonstrated how the hand would be cut. The elflings tensed some, but drunk this in as avidly as all their other lessons, so the elf-warrior proceeded to the more troublesome portion of the afternoon. Elrohir braced himself; his brother did indeed slit his hand, then sliced his own in turn. The elflings gasped at this sudden, startling gesture, but held fast against tears when they saw neither elf had even winced in pain. Snatching the binding cloth from within his tunic, Elladan then showed how the couple’s hands will be bound together, their bloods melded to signify the union of their bodies, in addition to their spirits. He was sure to cover how their feas would become luminescent, two golden auras forged into one white-hot effigy before their very eyes, which was their cue to quietly quit the altar and stand by with their fathers. 

Three pairs of awe-filled eyes gaped at his final ruse, the unwrapping of their twined hands and the revelation to two pristinely healed palms. This strange evidence had unleashed a spatter of rabid queries: how could *their* hands heal if they are not bound? They are twins, Elrohir elucidated, bound forever in the womb. Will Tathren and Echo be brothers, then, by this rite? Nay, Elladan explained, they were not born together. They are marrying their feas out of romantic love, will live together eternally, not by design, but by personal choice. This last was a sticking point for some time, left unresolved by Rohrith’s typically daring inquiry: will our palms mend if we scratch and join them, as we are brothers? Elrohir’s pointed, disapproving stare accomplished what no amount of dissuasion could, the chastening of his most impish son. 

Once their inquiries were suitably appeased, they cast off their dour faces and embraced their perspicacious infancy anew, only too eager to skip back up the aisle and race out into the lush gardens. Elladan wove a heartening arm around his soft-eyed twin.

“Fear not, gwanur-nin,” the elf-warrior reassured him. “There is time, yet, to embrace their elflinghood and enjoy their tender years.” 

“Aye, there is,” Elrohir nodded, still somewhat resigned. “Too briefly had… but such a blessing.” 

* * *

With a rough intake of breath, Legolas cast eyes upon the most gallant, sure, and radiant elf in Aman that blessed day; a starchild of Eru if ever one was rendered, of Elbereth’s giving, gracious hand and Astaldo the Valiant’s hallowed potency, a perfect melding of elven elegance and of mannish might. Lionhearted. Adventurous. A lover. A survivor. 

His ethereal son, the groom. 

Tathren raised an anxious gaze up from fastening his swordbelt, as Legolas padded into his childhood bedchamber. His finery made and measured for the occasion, Tathren had chosen a formal uniform design for his binding day. Gold-dusted breeches of luxurious suede offset his mostly white attire: his ornate, intricately embroidered tunic, diaphanous shirt beneath, and sterling-bright boots. His cornsilk hair was woven in the fashion of Greenwood’s highest guard-captains, though he was crowned by a gold circlet of birch leaves, denoting his proper rank. He wore Oropher’s jewel-encrusted, ceremonial sword at his hip, which Mithbrethil had been only too proud to bequeath to him. 

He was in every possible way glorious, this goodly son of his; Legolas was speechless before him, though Tathren could not help a wry smirk at this, ever the mischievous Mirkwood elf. 

“Come now, Ada, and be heartened,” Tathren greeted him, bashfully beckoning him forth. “See what an awkward elf you have sired? I cannot properly latch my boots! Say nothing of lashing my laces!” 

Once in closer quarters, Legolas did indeed perceive that the stunning elf before him was held together by faith alone, such a muddle had he made of his fastenings. Indeed, Tathren trembled almost imperceptibly, though Legolas would never have believed he would be so unmoored by the prospect of binding with his ten-years beloved. Yet he sharply remembered the queasy flutters of his own binding day, so entirely had he convinced himself that Elrohir would see clear and break with him at the last second. Even after the hot loving of the previous weeks, he had not been able to entirely digest the fact of his good fortune, that a Son of Elrond – one of such moonlit comeliness, such unctuous heart – had been willing to bind eternally with him, a green, lastborn wood-elf. With a soft chuckle, he set about righting the tangled knots, as Tathren struggled not to quake outright. His son raptly observed himself in the looking glass, not out of arrogance, but with the acuteness of one so besotted even the most oblivious detail must be perfected, before he could present himself to his intended. 

Legolas knew he should make some conversation to distract him, but it was all he could do to focus on the laces and keep himself constant, so affected was he by thoughts, memories, echoes of another age. Curiously, he found that the tenor of his son’s loving reminded him of none so much as Aragorn, another whose wedding laces he had so tenderly tied, so long ago. Sadness skewered him through at such a dear, dire remembrance; he could only cling to the hope that, somewhere in the heavens above, Aragorn and Arwen looked over them this day, approving of the manner in which his eternity played out, of the joyous occasions their own blazing love had stole from them. That Tathren himself had been willing to forgo this day, this joy, for the benefit of thousands of other hearts proved him their equal, worthy of a place in the pantheon of the greatest lovers of elf and of man kind. 

Legolas himself had no regrets about his own choice, about his own potential sacrifice for sake of his son. Though a year had now passed, he often reminded himself of the reasoning that led him to his father’s tent that blackest of nights, the crystallization of certain ideas that had longly flitted about his mind, during Tathren’s eight year absence. He had privately come to the conclusion that, were it not for his son’s impending birth, he would not have survived the War of the Ring. Before departing on his quest, he had long believed that the Valar had gifted Elrohir to him in exchange for the time he would spend at Mandos, that they intended his love as an early prize for his later valor, for the laying down of his life to Sauron’s dark mischief. Legolas had been so startled by the initial knowledge of Tathren’s siring, because it caused a rift in this perceived design. He was not supposed to grapple for the last strains of his life, to protect himself as well as his fellowship, to cling to the sparest *hope* amidst the mire of Mordor; he had reaped of the bounty granted to him, of Elrohir’s undaunted heart. The tiny, helpless seed he had sown held such power that it anchored him to the world, perhaps even the one ripple in the flow of time that caused Sauron’s downfall; or so Legolas felt, at times, so revolutionary had this child’s potential been to his existence. 

He had almost squandered this saving grace through sheer disbelief, secreting a generous share of his heart away lest Sauron himself return for it. When Thranduil had invaded, just as he was beginning to feel secure in their peacetime, he had known - *known* as only a father could – that his time of reckoning was upon him. His son, his anchor and his salvation, would not be gutted like a feast-day boar before their giving gods, not in his place. In allowing such a golden child to be sired in such a fateful time, the Valar had pacted with him, charged him with the protection of their herald, of his shining one. 

He knew, then and now, of his true purpose. He had acted in accord with Iluvatar above, and had again been blessed with survival, with the chance to be present on this hallowed day. 

The dressings tightly bound, Legolas again regarded the stirring elf before him, eyes ever marveling at his miraculous rendering. Tathren caught up his now quivering hand, smiled sympathetically. 

“Ada, you must not weep *before* the rites,” Tathren softly chided him. 

“How can I help but weep from the wonder of seeing you thus,” Legolas remarked. “My little willow sprouted into such a strong, gracious tree, of lush leaves and of sheltering boughs. I’ve no doubt you will prove the finest of husbands to your mate.” 

“If my manner is kindly and my loving fine,” Tathren assured him. “It is only through the most sterling of examples. Your own, bonded to my other dearly father.” After a sigh, Tathren’s smile dimmed some; he seemed to ponder a rather weighty matter, clutching hard to Legolas’ arms. “Ada… before I begin to forge a new life with my beloved, I would set to rest a point of… of concern, in regards to… I know you will not like to speak of such things on this of all days, but I would bury this question of mine, once and for all. I swear I will not speak of it after, not for the balance of my years.” 

“How now?” Legolas inquired, surprised by his sobriety. “Please, ioneth, speak freely of what you would. I would have no wound left unmended between us.” 

“I have not been wounded, Ada,” Tathren quietly explained. “But uncommonly blessed. I would only… give thanks for this secret blessing. Acknowledge its existence, this once, and be allowed my gratitude.” 

“I confess, your meaning eludes me,” Legolas pondered, as he led them over so they might perch on the edge of the bed. “Tell me of this… blessing.” 

Tathren took a fortifying breath, gripping his father’s hands for seemingly unneeded courage. 

“Ada, I…,” he haltingly began. “I know… nay, in truth, I have but longly suspected…” He paused to center himself, to choose a righteous tact. “I merely wish to express my… my intense and unyielding gratitude that this day, in striking particular, will indeed come to pass. I know not how you convinced him to quit the vale, without any prize to pacify him, but I know… it could not have been ought but you, Ada, who went to him. Who bargained with him and bought my life back. I know not how to thank you, and I know you think I have nothing to praise in this action, nor do I believe you will even satisfy me with acknowledgement of its truth, but regardless of all these obstacles, I cannot let Arien dip below the horizon – not on *this day* - without paying tribute to he who… who so selflessly and in the face of such personal cost…who gave me life in wartime, and then in peace gave me my life again.” Unable to keep back any longer, he seized Legolas by the arms and ardently kissed his cheek. “Gerich veleth nin, Ada.” 

Rendered speechless by the currents of feeling that threatened to wash away the last vestiges of his self-control, Legolas could only crush this beautiful, heartbreaking son of his against him, revealing in this iron, emotional embrace what his humility yet denied him. 

When at last he corralled himself into some semblance of possession, he confessed naught but his relentless admiration. 

“Live long and well with your beloved,” Legolas whispered to him. “Love him well. Venture forth over these lands and take your glory, but ever with him by your side. If you would pay homage to your fathers’ care, that is how we will take our tributes, son of my heart. My dearest, most brave and lovely one.” 

He felt his golden son sink further into his secure arms, cherished this fleeting moment of warmth between them, before relinquishing him to his beloved’s care. 

* * * 

As they came to stand before the altar, surrounded by concentric circles of brothers, foremothers, fathers, friends, and family intimates, a reverent hush came over the collected elves. 

For him, there was none but the darkling elf before him, no other in the world of air or of ether. Swathed in robes of velvet midnight, his skin gleaming as an ocean pearl and his spills of ebony hair crowned by a mithril circlet, crafted as a round of silmarils, he was the most immaculate creature Tathren had ever gazed upon, a pure heart fashioned by the grace of the Lady herself. 

His one. His Echoriath. 

The swirls of gathered elves cinched closer, cocooning them in silken layers of solidarity, so that their final evolution might be born in this womb, in the care of their ancestors above and their contemporaries about. Tathren let this heartening vision fade into periphery, his keen focus solely on the golden eyes that ever balmed him in acute adoration. There could be no doubt as to the breadth and depths to which he was loved, nor the sterling honor of the heart he chose to bind with. Already he felt the first filaments of their sought-after connection snake around him, a dew break over his skin from the rapidly rising temperature, as if he stood at once before a blazing hearth and was himself its flaming source. The elves about began to gently sway to the solemn notes of their grandsire’s sung incantation, they billowed forth and aft as petals in a gale. Lulled into a heightened fugue by their rhythmic undulations, the air about took on a sultry texture, thick and heady, as gushes of unctuous heat poured into him. The sears and whips of sheer carnality were mingled in the rush, but overwhelmed by utter, indelible bliss. A righteous fire swelled up within him, his churning heart impossibly engorged with feeling. Echo’s incandescent golden eyes became a beacon, a boon, a healing bath for his solitary soul and a flaming sea that would sweep him eternally away. 

Without thought or hesitation, he dove in. 

His fea surged, effulgent, and spurt forth with volcanic intent, as a hot wave of equally potent spirit engulfed him. He and Echo floated out of their scorching flesh, out of the gauzy hall, out of the current of time, stolen by the tide of their mutual feeling into the otherworld. There in that sacred, fluid plain, he ceased to be himself altogether, as their feas bled into one constant stream, one singeing flame, one impalpable essence. What he had been flowed into what they were, what they would be as one mated being poured back into their two exquisite vessels, both yet seized by a burning, near-unquenchable thirst for the bodily oneness that would be the final completion of their union. 

Tathren was suddenly roused, from a rapt admiration of Echoriath’s ethereal loveliness, by the unlacing of their binding knot. He wrenched his eyes away long enough to mark that its silver length was flecked with their blood, the only evidence of the slice that had split his palm. He had not felt the dagger’s bite, nor even his hand being proffered forth. Echo was similarly startled by his unblemished skin, when Elrond tied the ribbon around his wrist to conserve it for their later loving. 

With no little wonderment, he began to experience Echoriath’s emotional shifts as his own, as if his heart was influenced by the same forces and preoccupied by the same cares. He felt the spike of feeling when those eyes flittered over to Elladan, the swell of pride when they met Glorfindel, the tremulous but endearing connection when Cuthalion broke with tradition and squeezed tender at his twin’s arm. Tathren had been warned that this aspect only lasted-out the ritual’s completion, in their binding bed, but already he yearned for further hours of these compelling sensations, of this most intimate knowledge of his husband’s heart. The full knowledge of which he was made vitally aware, when Echoriath gazed upon him with incendiary eyes. 

He felt the tremendous echo of his own heart’s swell within his enraptured beloved, the kiss that soon resulted smoldering, nearly sundering any feeble restraint that held them from completing their rites then and there. The ecstatic exclamation from their gathered familiars only served to further embroil them; only Elrond, who had experience enough of the ardor of newly bound elves, possessed the wherewithal to ease them gently apart and urge them to embrace their glowing families. 

With a last, tender kiss to his forever mate, Tathren surrendered to the celebratory aspects of the day with an affable smile. He felt an euphoric peace, alive as never before. 

His heart and home were now dearly, eternally kept within him. 

* * *

They had all felt it, all fed from it as from a well in the desert. From the moment of their binding, the air simmered with it, blithe and intoxicating, each of them brimming with gentleness, caring, good cheer. Even now, as he looked back into the banquet hall to the long table, surrounded by his most beloved family, he could feel them basking in the pregnant air, ripe with such heady emotion as to render them all witless by night’s end. 

Perhaps, he considered, this was the Valar’s ultimate intent. 

Something unprecedented had occurred at the moment of Tathren and Echoriath’s binding; some overload in the higher plain or overspill from their melding. Every elf present soon found themselves rightly sodden with love, as if the normal strictures on intense feelings – which did keep the common elf sane, as one could not go about one’s affairs constantly afflicted by arduous affection, nor would said emotion be as special if one was perpetually subject to it – had been laxed to the point of ineffectuality. 

Elrohir could not gaze upon his younglings without being seized by their beauty, upon his brother without the most strident surge of filial regard, upon his parents without an aching gratitude for their generosity in his rearing, to say nothing of the at once fiery and fearsomely devout love that welled up when he lay eyes on his luminous Legolas. He suspected Echoriath’s Maian wiles to be the cause, but wondered how the evening would play out. Already the table had been emphatically and entirely reduced to tears by five heartrending speeches in honor of the new couple. Unable to properly devour the sight of their beauteous mates or beloveds, they had instead feasted as if starved for a fortnight, tossing back rich mouthfuls of wine with abandon, gorging on fatted meats as if a lover’s inner thigh, savoring every juicy morsel as if the curve of a husband’s scarlet lip. 

The children, thankfully, had not seemed to be overly affected, their merriment of the usual tenor, if not slightly tinged with fatigue. Their parents, however, had not been granted such a reprieve; in one tense moment, he had thought Legolas and Elrond might verily come to blows over the chance to curl their amiable Brithor into doting arms. He himself had been shamefully provoked by Nenuial nursing their ever-twinkling Tinuviel. Indeed, he’d escaped onto the balcony, for some useless, hazy air, to stop himself from objecting when Nenuial decided to retire. The children, thankfully, would rest with their mother and grandmother Laurelith this night, for he could not conscience exposing them to the raucous coitus in which he would soon be impelled to engage his deliciously wrought husband. 

As the night had wore on, Tathren and Echoriath had struggled to keep their caresses chaste, their touches sober, their limbs from entwining too desperately. In witness to this strain, he had vividly recalled his own binding night; though at present he found he felt no different from that braising need for the claiming of his mate. In older times, an elven couple was allowed to complete the ritual in body but moments after its spiritual counterpart, to lessen the strain of the later feasting, but this practice had somehow gone out of favor. He admired his son his restraint; for if their loving could infuse the very air itself with heady, enthralling fumes, they must be suffering through some roaring fever for the sake of their family’s cheer. The Valar only knew how the vale would be infected, once they quit the feast and adventured forth, into ecstasy. 

He only prayed he and Legolas were abed, with ample reserves of salve and without a stitch of cloth to hinder them. 

As if summoned by his scarlet thoughts, the archer himself strode onto the balcony, with such a virile swagger Elrohir’s throat was immediately parched of moisture. Though he worried even the most fleeting of touches would be perilous to his own self-containment, he could not rightly keep from Legolas’ arms, whose lofty envelopment distracted him from any thought whatsoever. 

“Elrohir,” he purred, as if claiming him by the mere utterance of his name. “You have abandoned me in a bed of lust-minded lovers, without my own comely mate to surreptitiously fondle.” 

“The atmosphere was steaming up considerably,” Elrohir assented. “Has it come to a boil, at last?” 

“Nay, but the cauldron bubbles hot,” Legolas rasped. “Tathren and Echo, to everyone’s astonishment, are by far the most restrained. Our children, gratefully, are long tucked away, else they may never recover from such a startling sight as their grandparents kissing with lingering indulgence. My brothers laze wantonly about the hearth, the golden manes of their mates spread unctuously about their laps. A conservative estimate of a dozen maids have called on Cuthalion and been dismissed, who himself twitches such in his seat that I fear he may very well snap the legs off. Even Erestor and Haldir are draped about each other as if already swathed in sodden sheets, while I will not dare describe the indecencies of Elladan and Glorfindel, as their mere conjuring may verily compel me to ravage you where we stand, melethron.” 

“To say nothing of the woods around,” Elrohir added. “Do you mark the moans and keens emanating from the hollows, say nothing of the gardens below? Elves of all tribes have met with their beloveds in the forest deep, lured by the siren call of the one heart that beats within our son and his mate. They are groping and grinding under the starlight, in tribute to our married children, waiting to ride the aftershocks of their elemental joining. Have you ever felt such a thing, Legolas? Such… relentless passion. I fear it may very well drown us all.” 

“I would drown in you, my beauty,” Legolas murmured, suckling his ear. “Let us bless our children and take our leave, Elrohir. I dare not fret over what may or may not come to pass; we are in the crucible of the Valar’s care, this night. They mean for us to know of their love through the reforging of our bond, and I, for one, need no divine excuse to besot myself with your loveliness.” 

His spine sparked with delicious anticipation, Elrohir let his waking body convince his yet overcautious mind of his husband’s wisdom, in this. A night of fervent lovemaking should never be foregone, no matter what the impulse nor the consequences, of which he could not imagine there would be many, other than some creaking muscles, come morn. 

“Well reasoned,” Elrohir smirked, rather wolfishly at that. “Come, then, my golden one. To bed with you! My desire will be caged no longer and I would ravage the whole of you with exacting care, this night.” 

He peppered this proclamation with a bawdy kiss, then slunk back into the banquet hall, guiding his eager lover to table, to bed. 

* * *

The breeze was salty sweet, coarse with sea spray even on such a balmy night. The ocean air had wafted inland for incalculable miles to wash over them in their most heated moments, cool those couples hidden in the woods beyond and the gardens below, as if come to worship. 

Echoriath stood, bare, before the open window, its diaphanous blue curtains rippling like the surface of an unsettled pond. The Lord had honored them with a bedchamber in his own house, both to cater to their every whim and to offer them a ready sanctuary after their feasting. The room behind him was resplendent in amenities: a steaming bath, plumped bed, cupboard of spirits, night table of fragrant salves, satin robes sown by the doting Celebrian, and sarongs woven by Laurelith herself, as well as a veritable greenhouse full of lush blooms. Though he was grateful for these indulgences, this meticulous care, his mind was fixed on the flaxen-haired elf presently quarrelling with the latches of his boots. He himself had shed his robes in an instant - they were already hung in the wardrobe – and so chose to steal a tranquil moment in reverence of the night. 

The humid air streamed like a waterfall over his skin, each gentle gush of wind wickedly teasing. The moist gusts carried with them moans, cries, keens, these aural pleasures like a bawdy chorus, singing in an unique and unforgettable voice of their love. Echoriath felt calm, centered as never before, imbued with a potential no other possessed within, to move, mark, and mate with his beloved as no other could. He would reap the bounty of his lifelong devotion, this night; all traces of anguish, envy, and the torment of isolation, of brilliance, banished forever. Lapsing into reverie, he played the most cherished images of their binding rites through his mind’s eye: the first sight of Tathren’s incomparable radiance, the glint of assurance in his avid gaze as he stepped onto the altar, how his face flushed when the first wave of heat assaulted him, its beatific glow after their melding. 

Even now, in his serenity, he was nourished by their bond; able to summon the warmth of Tathren’s heart by the merest twine of his lips. At table, they had grinned as one, laughed as one, been concomitantly struck by some poignant anecdote and – more perilously – been tempted by the other’s incarnate presence with equal ferocity. They were, however, in no rush to quicken the proceedings, to thoughtlessly mate their bodies before fuelling their souls with unctuous affection. Though he presently displayed his rather sinuous frame for Tathren’s scrupulous perusal – hence the ongoing battle with his tunic laces – their coupling would not rightly commence until he was spared a moment for some tender troths the binding rites did not allow for. 

Yet Echoriath was not entirely above speeding things along through smart, randy devising. He had observed that Tathren had loosed his breeches first, though had not yet dropped them down. Instead, a half-mast erection poked up between their spread flaps, not stiff enough to ache but needful enough to pose a considerable distraction, along with the temptingly naked husband before the window. Said husband, who relished the newly appellation as readily as he flexed his newly cinched ring finger, observed this gamely amusing sight in the pane’s reflection, then impishly chose to test the, ahem, effectuality of their esteemed wholeness. He dappled curious fingertips over his own puckered nipple, which caused Tathren to gasp sharply. Encouraged, Echoriath worried his nub to stinging hardness, then nimble fingers meandered over to the other, engaging in a similar assault. Before long, Tathren had ripped his own tunic off; though Echo, feeding off the sensations of his husband’s torment, gave up before they leapt upon each other. 

He had no intention of loving Tathren with his yet unconquered boots on. As the golden elf bent restlessly to the task, Echoriath grew more daring. He gently palmed his own slow sprouting engorgement and raked the most innocuous of strokes along its swelling length. A familiar groan sounded from behind; in the mirror-pane, he watched with bemusement – and a hastily rising need – as Tathren rolled his hips in counterpoint with those agonizingly visceral strokes, his shaft turned a lecherous crimson. It was more difficult to stave off than he expected, as he was himself rightly roused, though his need was soon further stoked by the press of a firm, fully deployed body against his back. Covetous arms encircled him, as Tathren drank copiously from his crisp scented hair. 

“My one,” the golden elf murmured, tightening the ready hold of his enveloping arms. “My Echo, my only one. I have often dreamt of this day, but somehow I could never rightly cast the sterling tenor of its spell upon me. I flame with love, but am warmed by your presence within; I desire you hotly, but am tempered by the endearing sight of my lovely, constant husband. My life’s mate. I am yours, bereth-nin, servant to your cares and resident in your heart.”

“As you are my way, melethron,” Echoriath vowed. “Even when you did not knowingly lead, I have followed: your example, your righteousness, your embrace of the world at large and of the myriad peoples within. Twas from you I learned graciousness, Tathren, kindness and civility. You whet my appetite for adventure, when I thought myself too poorly made to deserve such astounding experiences, and have guided me, guarded me, vigilantly and religiously, through every event of my life. I have worked for this moment, meleth-nin, my every task, every design, every creation in honor of your benevolence, crafted in hopes of deserving your eternal heart.” He turned within his arms, cupped his face to gaze upon his husband, his effort’s prize. “To feel you within me, to know you as no other can is a blessing beyond account… but I have always been yours. No other has moved me, meant to me, *owned* my heart as you. I wear the circlet of my father’s house, but I am crowned by the honor of your love and entitled only by the bond we forged this very day, bereth-nin. I love you. *Elbereth*, how I love you…” 

He could not keep his lips from searing over his husband’s own, could not for another instant hold himself from backing him towards the bed. They were ruthlessly embroiled even before they fell upon its silken sheets, tumbling into a writhing mass of searching hands, twining legs, heaving chests, and pillaging mouths. Nipples were assaulted with feverish intent, necks suckled and buttocks kneaded, until both pelts of skin were blushed an impassioned scarlet. Each caress resounded within oneself, each sensual touch and bold maneuver felt as one’s own arousal. The fury of their loving was such that both quaked and shuddered as if in the thrall of spending, though they had not even yet begun to truly mate. Both wished this rowdy, rapturous foreplay could be drawn out for hours, but each shock of their members grazing together, each molten kiss and beat of their rabid pulse told of how desperately their bodies longed to unite. 

Tathren, hoping to quell them some, elongated his strokes rather eloquently, until Echoriath purred like a cream-glutted cat. He caught a plump, ruddy lip between his own, then saucily tongued its voluptuous curve. Echoriath smiled dizzily at him, easing out of his embrace and lying languidly back, ready for and approving of his endgame. His golden eyes took on an almost innocent air, their admiring regard so suddenly pure, so lovely, that Tathren was reminded of their first night of loving. When Echo, with just such a gaze, had beckoned him on to a second taking. That clear, flawless stare had told his heart what his mind would only acknowledge weeks later; his cousin was hopelessly enamored with him, may even love him, so ardently that he had conserved his virginity until he alone might claim it. The first of so many gifts his precious one had bequeathed him, the latest and most cherished being their binding vow. 

Finally, I have paid him in kind, Tathren heartened himself with this thought. He bent down to snatch another kiss, before venturing to the night table to select a salve. During this strut, the taut cut of his buttocks and the feral sweep of his back did not go unappreciated by his husband, who flagrantly whistled his approbation, before giggling as precociously as the triplets. Upon his return with their favorite heather scent and the ceremonial dagger, Tathren knelt upon the bed and gathered Echo onto his lap. 

Weaving lissome fingers through his loose sheathes of flaxen hair, Echoriath laved long, flirty kisses over his too-willing mouth, as Tathren positioned them for maximum pelvic friction. A groan rumbled over his lips, when he doused their laps with a generous slop of the salve, then worked the glutinous liquid over their turgid, tight-strung shafts. Echoriath rolled his strong, muscled hips into a grind matched by his tongue, their love-play now extended beyond any hope of propriety. His fea burned incandescently hot at the prospect of their joining, of the ultimate fulfillment of their bond and the transcendent pleasure this would evoke. Blood fled through his veins to vertiginous effect, his entire being shaking with the undiluted sensation of stimulation given and echoed within, of the effulgence of their blooming flames, of the revivifying of their shared fea. 

The dagger scored into his palm, opening the invisible wound anew, then Tathren gripped their hands together and he was taken by the flood. 

Echoriath bit into the kiss as he was pierced, tasting blood and lip and endless love, the unique and vital essence of his mate. He opened himself, heart to mouth to soul to sacred core, to be possessed by his husband, thoroughly claimed and utterly consumed, until the rapture overwhelmed his golden one and he spent deep within him. Echoriath felt the furious charge of his orgasm as if it was his own, but strangely was not finished by the doubly fierce release. 

For him, the eruption blasted within; the strictures of his ethereal form melting fluid. Tathren was there with him, was in him, was one with him, his glorious being, his indelible love. Together they lingered on a cavernous sigh, then released a stream of potent, luxurious euphoria into the ether. While his physical body threw his lover over and mounted him in turn, the thrall of their soul’s pyrotechnic flame scorched the very air around them hot with lust, until each thrust pumped another blissful wave into the beyond, another intoxicating tide of ecstasy. 

The roaring rush of emotion that poured from them kept on long after Echoriath was sundered by release and curled up with his husband in a languid embrace, whispering further troths until they were rested enough to love again. 

Indeed, throughout the vale the elves of Telperion were besotted by a weird, wilding fever, which roused their senses such as rarely experienced outside of a lover’s bed and subsequently urged them to seek one out as soon as possible. The ale halls were soon thunderously cleared, as their patrons paired off with a likely prospect, as were the training fields, the gaming rooms, the guilds, forges, and forest walks not already staked out by those longtime lovers caught in carnal embrace. These last loved as if they’d never before lain with their dearly ones, so intently that they could not quit their beds, even as the dawn rose. 

From the gong of that heady midnight, for the length of a day, another night, and until the following morn, lovers neglected their chores, let their children sleep (which they strangely did for the entire length of time), and lingered in their beds, lazing in dew-eyed admiration when not writhing at the loins. 

The newly bound couple’s nearest kin were the most brutally affected. Though no otherworldly encouragement was required for Elrohir and Legolas to forget the day in lovemaking, they coupled with a frequency and fervor unmatched in their centuries of marriage; no act tainted as in the throes of the execrable lust-fever of years before, but each session only serving to intensify their own peerless bond. Elladan and Glorfindel barely escaped the Lord’s house in time to spare their son an admittedly not uncommon, though shameless view of his elders, though were stuck under a graciously accommodating elm until sunrise, when the dearth of nubile, grunting younglings around them quenched them long enough to reach their talan. Cuthalion was the most acutely afflicted by his twin’s sensual power, his vow of celibacy pummeled beyond recognition when he took three rather giddy maids to bed for the duration of this lust-frenzy. None of the three were ever after heard to complain, not of his wantonness nor of their intense satisfaction. Mithbrethil and Aneandrel got frivolously lost in the denser part of the woods, emerging an entire week later clothed in naught but strategically placed leaves. Luinaelin and his mate were among the compound dozens to beget another child, while the Lord of Telperion himself could be heard, roaring just a few halls down from his blissful grandchildren, though his Lady was too demure to let her passionate cries ring so. 

As the rosy dawn peaked over the horizon that first morn of their marriage, Tathren and Echo sunk into a warm, restoring bath, into the other’s exquisite arms. Though lusty keens yet breezed through the window and they were glad to so inspire the vale to such bawdy expressions, they held no cares save for each other, for the life’s journey they’d begun, for the eternity stretched out before them. 

* * * 

One Year Later

As a dozy twilight, of filmy blues, burnished gold, and lush indigoes, sunk behind the misty, distant treetops, a mewl of primeval force was wrenched from the ellyth beneath him. Fatty, mucous-thick fluid was buttered over her inner thighs, spattered with gelatinous clumps of blood, though the limber gams flexed with meaty muscle. Her bulbous stomach seized again and she shoved the mass forward with all her might, her clammy brow clenched in leonine exertion, entirely focused on the being’s imminent expulsion, into the known world and into her covetous arms. 

Elrohir muttered a silent prayer of thanks that the beleaguered ellyth had already birthed two healthy, and rather darling, elflings, who waited so patiently for news of their newest sibling in the Hall of Fire, where they had gathered all the anxious families. The last maid he had aided, just an hour ago, was a first time mother; twas rather difficult to concentrate on the safe passage of the babe, when the naneth regarded one as a virgin elf might regard a rape-minded orc, terror writ across every sodden feature. If he had had more ample time to prepare her, perhaps he could have somehow lessened her fear, but by this time the Halls of Healing were averaging three births per hour. As there were only three medics to perform the deliveries, one attendant of his own pregnant wife, the strain was considerable. Say nothing of tasks appointed to Glorfindel, Haldir, Legolas, and Thorontir, that of calming their ash-faced bereths, corralling the gleeful children some already had, and guesstimating which babe would be the next to emerge. 

Which this little rascal, a tiger-lunged boy, did presently. He was a warrior elf if ever Elrohir had laid eyes on one, batting his deliverer with angry feet, squirming raucously in his placenta-drenched hands and squalling at gale force. With a wry chuckle as he wove him into a heated blanket, Elrohir reminded himself, not for the first time this exhausting day, that the task at hand was in essence a most pleasant one, even if he wished he had more of a chance to coddle the babes he guided through their birth-throes. Cuthalion and Elladan had been more fortunate in this regard, as they had replaced some of the nurses awhile and had been allowed to bathe some of the infants, while their mothers finally slept. 

There was, however, no rest to be had this historic day – or night by the ever-darkening window – as after nearly eighteen hours of relentless birthing, they had only accomplished half of their estimate yield. As he mopped his brow with a cool cloth, he rued the moment he’d foolishly allowed Tathren and Echoriath to vacation at the shore, on this their first anniversary as bond mates, if only so that they could witness firsthand the miracle their love had induced one year ago. Erestor had esteemed that fifty-three babes had been conceived in the thrall of the love spell, before he had chuckled quite heartily at their school’s assured future prosperity. Elrohir wondered if he was still so amused by the strange circumstance, as he was, for the moment, the only other healer skilled enough to tend to the bevy of mewling mothers. 

They had lost their third healer a few hours earlier, when his own wife had begot him a stunning daughter with all the grace esteemed of her, though he would return after a brief respite. Elrohir had not yet quite absorbed, nor entirely acclimated himself, to the arrival of his new sister, young aunt to a quorum of nieces and nephews at the very hour of her birth. He remembered all too vividly the night his Adar had invited them home for a nightcap, in order to confess of her conception. He had never seen his Lord and father so sheepish, so weary, yet even amidst his bone-core fatigue, there had been a wolfish spark, a glint of quicksilver in the argent eyes he’d bequeathed his beloved twins. Every member of the High Council had spent the last weeks dealing with the fallout, both happy and unfortunate, of the love-cast – as most had taken to naming it, the least of which was the realization that a veritable legion of ellyth were with child. When his Ada broke his own joyous news, he and Elladan had not quite known how to assimilate this altogether shocking development, though Elrond had quite graciously understood why they were not thunderstruck with elation. He himself had taken almost a week to fully digest the actuality of their situation, since he – as they – was rather reluctant to have another replace Arwen in his hearts. Through the following months, as the brethren had watched their Nana ripen, Elrohir had constantly reviewed Legolas’ own excellent reasoning on the subject, which was that he may have easily had another sister in the years after Arwen’s own begetting and he would not begrudge her now if they had always known her. Elrohir judged that he and Elladan simply needed some time with this new one, to coddle her and to dote upon her, and all would right itself. His parents had certainly reconciled themselves quite thoroughly and had welcomed their new child with a jubilation that greatly comforted Elrohir, naming her Lalaith in honor of the peals of giggles with which she had first greeted them, newly emergent from the womb. Doubly lucky was the fact that this second sister took after their mother in her sterling grace; indeed she looked more Cuthalion’s sibling than his own, as he and his brother resembled Echoriath more closely than his own fraternal twin. 

Such were the wonders of family lines, on glaring and humbling display in these Healing Halls. 

His silver nephew himself strolled into the surgery, balancing a babe in each bough-arm. He had charged into his chores like a falcon into the fray, preparing a quarry of bassinets in the patient ward, clearing the Hall of Fire for the families, commissioning blankets, pillows, robes both wee and large from every seamstress in the vale far in advance, and himself residing over the feeding and coddling of the new elflings, where he could. The elation that permanently lit his features, during their long night and even more strenuous day, had never once dimmed; second only to Glorfindel and Elladan’s glowing pride at seeing him so tender, so avidly engaged. Erestor was already musing over which teaching position would best suit him, while his brother pontificated, in between emergencies, on what a wonderful father he would be. Elrohir had to agree that the elf had indeed discovered his true talent, as long evidenced by Miriel and Orinath’s blatant worship of him. 

“Our tally has risen,” Cuthalion informed him, his enjoyment of this incredible day writ large across his ruddy face. “Twins for your bond-brother, Luinaelin.” 

“Twins in a Sinda line?” Elrohir sighed, shaking his head in abject incomprehension. “Unfathomable.” 

“I have observed little this day that complies with the strictures of fathomability,” Cuthalion remarked pointedly. “Would you not agree, Uncle?” 

“Most emphatically,” Elrohir smirked, as he stroked the plump cheeks of his two sweetly nephews. They were cherubs, both. “Yet we must not tarry long in conversation, there will be time enough for introspection on the morrow. Who is next?” 

“None, for the moment,” Cuthalion told him. “Grandsire has sent me to inform you of his return. There are only two naneth who look particularly wan, which he and Erestor are most capable of handling. The others are long from bursting, or so the midwives predict. A warm supper awaits in Erestor’s office, which the triplets helped Laurelith prepare, so I would advise you to scour the stew for gooseberries… Grandsire will summon you if there is trouble.”

“Summon me a few steps before trouble, hm?” Elrohir smiled outright, as his belly twinged in anticipation. 

He’d not eaten since a hasty fast-breaking shortly after dawn, during their first brief reprieve, each of which seemed to thankfully center around mealtimes. Kissing both babes - and Cuthalion himself - on their downy brows, he hurried into the blissfully tranquil study and swiftly shut the door. He eyed the billowy sofa, its burgundy cushions so enticing, but knew he must sit properly and dine slowly to restore his energies, then perhaps he could indulge in a short nap. 

Peace, thank Elbereth, was momentarily his.

He sunk into the rather comfortable armchair behind the desk and took a long whiff of his meal, meticulously prepared by his tender, considerate ones. Even such a simple tray of foods was evidence of their reverent regard for him. The jam pot was one they had painted together, one rainy afternoon when Echoriath had delivered some malformed pottery for them to decorate; its flaws and striking colors only made him cherish it more. They had clearly instructed Laurelith that he preferred mulberry jam with his honeycakes, no radishes in his salad, an amarinth bloom to enliven the tray. In their lately obsession with artistry, they had even included a drawing, which a merry note indicated each had contributed a part to, also wishing he and Legolas well. With characteristic impudence, the drawing was a silent plea for them to begin archery lessons, as it depicted their extended family with bows raised towards a common target; even Tinuviel, in Nenuial’s arms, had her own tiny quiver. Elrohir derived as much pleasure from this gift as he did satisfaction from the gorgeous meal, which was, sad to say, too quickly devoured for true appreciation. 

After a long, cleansing sigh, he curled up on the sofa, stealing yet another chance to admire his sons’ picture. Laying the parchment aside, he reflected on all the joy this momentous day had brought to the vale, all the families united, all the little ones to cherish. A new generation begot for the peacetime, of mixed race and of meaningful heritage, the best argument yet that elven society would thrive in Aman for ages to come. If the challenges of this current age were all so sublime, his eternity would indeed be thoroughly enjoyable. 

Already other, longtime couples were considering their own additions; Elladan and Glorfindel among them. His twin had wanted a daughter something awful since Tinuviel’s birth, though Elrohir judged he might have to put aside his plans awhile, until their sister had aged some. His own grandchildren would come along eventually, though Tathren had sworn they would not even think on a child until at least a few centuries had passed and they had made their mark on the realm by constructing a vale of their own, further down the shore. 

His eldest son was a constant source of pride to both his parents. In husbandry, Tathren was incomparable, save for Elrohir’s own vigilant mate, though their son did evidently take after the long line of devoted Greenwood nobles in his care and counsel of his mate. Even Thranduil, a current aberration in the trend, was once a husband sans pareil, having imparted this trait early to his three sons, each now so contentedly bound. 

These musings made Elrohir think on his Legolas; he wondered what despairing father-to-be presently occupied him. 

Relaxing further into the downy cushions, he fondly remembered their own scarlet time a year ago, caught in the fugue of the love-cast. After checking in on their slumbering babes, they had raced each other home, giddy with the night’s promise and seething with energy to expend. His fatherly pride had transformed into a need to dominate, to reduce his mate to the most malleable of lovers and to ride him to a blinding ecstasy. Legolas had given himself more candidly than ever before, all his barriers collapsed, his will at the mercy of Elrohir’s every whim. The elf-knight had, as was expected, treated him very kindly indeed, as Legolas was his dearest of all treasures. Their transcendent lovemaking in those early hours had reduced Legolas to quaking sobs and ardent troths by dawn’s brake, though it was their leisurely, sunrise stroll through the willow thicket, bare as was their custom, that loosed his tongue. 

Elrohir had listened to his confession with rapt attention, though had been more concerned with its concealment’s effects on Legolas than on his own injury, of which there was none. He had been a warrior, a strategist, and was no great fool. When one’s husband returned in the early hours with inexplicable scars upon his neck, a cunning mate might not immediately press the issue, but nevertheless take time to recognize the un-admitted truth in his own heart. Though he had somehow, strangely, not felt Legolas’ departure from their bed that black, thundering night, as soon as he’d later woken to an empty bed, he’d feared the worst. He knew his husband’s nature better than any, there had been only one conclusion to derive from the immovable facts. When he’d found him there, black as a raven by the fire, he’d known both that they’d won the day and that the loss of his father plagued him still, as no other. What good would have come from admitting this in the face of his gallant’s lie? Twas Legolas’ charge to unburden himself, to give himself credit for the performance of such a sacrifice. 

When Tathren had confronted him that afternoon, as Elrohir learnt in his confession, he had known he had misjudged the situation and had begged his husband’s forgiveness. He had only wanted to protect their son, to pay for his future on Thranduil’s inexcusable terms; as if Elrohir could not have reckoned why he would act thusly. The elf-knight had then made his own confession, of his suspicions, of his long-past forgiveness, of his admiration of yet another example of his mate’s inestimable valor. He had kissed him deeply, purely, given himself upon the high grass, so that all might be right with them anew. They had lingered there for some time, naked, loving, sharing such sensual passions that he had never wanted the day to end. 

If only the love-cast could afflict them every year. Though, in truth, he and Legolas often boldly attempted to rouse it anew… 

To his surprise, the golden elf in question presently slipped through the study doors, slinking over to the sofa with a tender smile on his face. 

“And here I thought you arm-deep in some bloody womb,” he teased, as Elrohir sat to lure him into his arms. The gambit worked a treat, as Legolas soon enveloped him, easing his mate’s heavy head onto his shoulder. 

“Not a breech among them,” he commented, after a yawn. “Indeed, other than a few first time nerves, there has been no great trouble. The Valar watch over us, this day. These are, more than any, children of Elbereth’s bounty.” 

“Beauteous they are, indeed,” Legolas seconded. “I have just seen your sister. By Eru, she is a jewel! Like a drop of pure mithril ore, shimmering and sprightly.” 

“Have you seen your brother’s twins?” Elrohir asked him, beaming. “Handsome as only Sinda sons can be, hardy as an oak even in elflinghood and hale as Greenwood in its prime.” He nuzzled the slender neck before him, his husband’s charms as innocently seductive as ever. “Nearly as comely as their uncle, my esteemed mate, though nowhere near as radiant.” 

“They are of Oropher’s line, then?” Legolas inquired, though he was far more attuned to the quickening of Elrohir’s breaths. 

“Aye,” the darkling elf whispered, before sneaking up to catch his waiting mouth in a slow, sensuous kiss. 

Legolas’ smile broadened even as he embraced his husband; though they could not conscience intimacy in such a place, he was nevertheless glad to infuse Elrohir with some sustaining affection. His only regret was that they had spent the greater portion of the glorious day apart, unable to gasp in unison at its astounding events, clasp the other’s hand in secret complicity, be partnered in activity as they were in love. Deep, relentless, and immaculate love. 

“Have I remarked, of late, on how your dedication inspires one and all, my beauty?” Legolas purred against his throat, where his eager lips had trailed down to and where hotly engaged in suckling. “A peerless example to our sons, a teacher to so many in the vale, my own gentle and giving instructor in the loving arts, in the art of love, in endless and never-ending things throughout the years… you are my very heart, star-rider.” 

Elrohir blushed faintly at the intensity of this praise, found his husband’s soft mouth again. 

“My Legolas,” he beamed, breaking off to regarded him with palpable adoration. “What manner of speech or turn of phrase will finally convince you of your inestimable valor, to this vale, to our children, to my heart and to our love? Need I remind you by whose action it is that we can cherish this day, and every day after, in peace? Who won back our son’s very life, ready as ever to sacrifice his own, the highest price of our happiness, to see our child survive?” Legolas sighed, reluctant as ever to take credit for his foolhardy action. Elrohir, seeing he would not budge him in this, instead proffered the parchment for his perusal. “If you will not take my word, then take some solace from this charming gift from our dear ones. Do you not mark, master archer, what activity lures them to distraction? Whom do you think they seek to emulate in these imaginings, they who have never seen me take ought but sword to arm?” 

Legolas laughed quite emphatically, when he laid a studious gaze on the drawing, then snuggled in with Elrohir to further appreciate its hidden message. 

“I see the crafting of some tiny bows may be in hasty order,” he observed, with no little pride. “Haldir and Rumil speak of similar proddings among their wilding ones. Perhaps the time has come to commence some light training, acclimate them to stance, hold, aim… though I pray these skills will be employed only in their leisure time.” 

“As do I, melethron,” Elrohir hushly agreed. He replaced his head in the crook of Legolas’ neck, content to bask in his husband’s unparalleled warmth. “We have known such dark times, my brave one, that I never dared hope such an age as this might be upon us. Though it too has had its troubles, on days such as this, I cannot help but believe that it was our love, coupled with our valor and our skills, that saw us through. Our bond is, above all, Elbereth’s greatest blessing.” 

Legolas’ concurrence rumbled through his chest, as he folded his elf-knight ever close. 

 

End of Part Sixteen


	17. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They have indeed been beautiful friends to me. This is the end.

Epilogue

Midsummer, Yen 1000, Fourth Age

The Lord of Imladros cut a bold swath of golden majesty against the twilight firmament, as he stood atop the precipice of the waterfall. Just steps beside, the effluent force of the Silpion flew over the spouting edge and dove blithely into her sister, the Sirion, before segueing in a rush laced with fume and foam into the vast blue of the ocean. He peered out through the sharp, crystalline night towards the midnight dark horizon, desperate for a glimmer, a spark of indication that the shift of power in Arda was complete, that this night would herald the dawn of a new age. 

The last embers of their jovial feast fumed among the huddled familiars on the plateau behind, where his extended family had gathered to frequent each other’s warm company, to watch for the firelight to the east, and, most importantly, to celebrate his firstborn’s tenth begetting-day. As the order sounded for the lighthouse beacon to be dimmed some to better see the faraway aura of the revels soon to rage in Arda, a tiny hand slipped stealthily into his own. Tathren, affected by the moment’s incredible poignancy, swooped down suddenly and gathered his son in his arms, holding his child high above the port and the valley he ruled over, as if in gracious tribute to the Valar above. 

With the exception of the rich amber hue of his eyes, his Lasgalen, whom everyone affectionately referred to as ‘Las, was in every way an exacting reproduction of his grandsire, the hallowed archer of the Ring Fellowship and former Prince of Mirkwood. Already Tathren saw gleams of his father’s honor, prowess, gallantry, and renown mischief in his little one, which only endeared him more to all the forefathers and foremothers only too ready to spoil him with care. Yet, as he and Echo had keenly discovered, ‘Las was never one to rest on his laurels, but took on the marveling world at large with avid curiosity and with relentless ardor. As such, he was only too eager to scour the horizon for any flare or flicker, happy to sacrifice his own stake on the day’s significance for the greater thrall of history-making. 

“Will it come soon, Ada?” he asked breathlessly, barely tearing his eyes away to solicit his father’s answer. 

“It may not come at all,” Tathren admitted, cautious not to entirely discourage his bright-minded elfling. “Though Ada-Echo has done some many experiments and has high hopes. If but a little more cloud gathers, we may see some reflection there.” 

“Is Arda very far away?” he queried, still working out for himself the logistics of this unfamiliar place. 

“Leagues and leagues,” Tathren replied. “Tis further oversea to Arda than the entire stretch of coastline from Laurelin to Gondolen. We sailed for many months, to come home to Aman.” He knew ‘Las did not entirely comprehend how his fathers could have been born in another place and consider this land their home, as he himself had not yet traveled much, but insisted on slowly familiarizing his child with his family history. 

“For months?!” Lasgalen gasped, wide-eyed. “On a tiny ship?!” He could not quite conceive of lacking space in which to frolic and to play. 

“Twas a colossal ship your grandsire built,” Tathren informed him. “Not like the trade ships that sit in the harbor, pen-neth, but sleek and graceful. We will visit one, when next a dignitary comes from Tirion.”

“Verily?” he grinned, already wriggling with delight. “I must tell grandsire, Ada!” 

Fearlessly squirming out of his hold and down the length of his leg, ‘Las barely glanced back at the dead-drop cliffside, before scurrying off to find any one of his grandfathers willing to lend his lilting chirps an ear, which meant all of them. 

With a final, wondering look across the sea, Tathren himself ventured back to their banquet table, admiring the glorious assembly of their family as he strode forth. 

At the head of the table the elders sat, in rapt observance of their vivacious brood, proud as peacocks and dressed with similar ornamentation. Elrond was ever chief among them, even in the realm he had bequeathed to his grandson, with his silvery wife Celebrian constant by his side. Laurelith and Dioren’s mother, Indis, gossiped nearby, while Erestor and Haldir made a decent show of politeness whilst their two infant granddaughters tousled about their robes. The parents of this lively sextet, Cuthalion and Miriel, were locked in a gauzy gaze, as Talion fondly pet the bulbous belly that would berth their seventh babe for some months yet. Tinuviel and Orinath were happily wrestling with some of his older nieces and nephews in the verdure behind, when not toppling each other with an entirely different intent, but with equal fervor. Along the never-ending table were collected so many goodly others: Echoriath’s sisters Crissae and Hislome, Luinaelin’s family, Mithbrethil and his bereth, Lalaith and her new husband. 

In the central seats, the three ring-warriors mocked and jested as if in a Gondorian ale hall, ever thick as proverbial thieves, though the molten looks Legolas shot Elrohir were more scandalous than criminal. Though Elladan was momentarily turned away from Glorfindel – who was engaged in quiet conversation with Nenuial and her mate – their hands were entwined on the table top. The knightly trio’s merriment was paused by the advent of an ecstatic Lasgalen, who regaled them with his lately learnings. Though the elfling could not possibly be still during his recounting, each of his astounding number of grandfathers was only too eager to flatter their little one with touches, clasps, and caresses, the fact of his existence still somewhat magical to them. Elrohir especially could not long keep from tangling his fingers in those angelic tresses of hair. Every time his father repeated this gesture, Tathren’s breath caught in his throat, though his heart had long settled on the reason for it. Yet the echo plunged him so deeply into childhood memories that he oft thought they might drown him, so he shifted his gaze to his gaggle of brothers. 

They were a motley bunch, as ever, their wiles not much improved with the addition of loving mates, in his taunting fraternal estimation. A twinge of anxiety overcame him at the thought of their imminent departure for his birth-land. Ivrin was at last undertaking a life-long dream of his, to sail to Arda. Ciryon had been somehow convinced to accompany him – Tathren gathered there must be some considerable sensual treats promised for such an uncharacteristic recompense – which had lead Rohrith and Dioren, Brithor and his sprightly mate Eressea to beg allegiance. Despite the uproarious objections of most of their elders, they had hotly vowed to be extremely cautious, to traffic only with elves, and to not linger past the advised six month sojourn, but privately they had confided to him that they wanted to see what remained of Imladris, Ithilien, and sneak into Minas Tirith to meet secretly with the new Queen of Gondor. They swore black and blue that they would take huge pains to conceal their elven qualities and that the task of delivering Erestor’s histories to the right-minded loremasters was a vital one, but Tathren nevertheless suffered sleepless nights at the thought of what they might encounter there; this, before they had even cast off! 

Thankfully, Echoriath was schooling them in preparation for the journey. Tathren could not help but course with undulating affection at the sight of his starlight mate, who presently cradled their newly twin babes with the affinity of an adoring parent; their daughter, Elladriel, and their second son, Ecthelion. As he settled in beside his genial husband, he marveled anew at their incredible fortune, that Elbereth’s handmaid had been so generous as to be the vessel of three gorgeous children, these last two unprecedented in elven history as fraternal, dual-gendered twins. After planting kisses on both his sweetly babes, Tathren implored Echoriath to give in to Ciryon’s covetous eyes and allow him to coddle his niece, while Elrohir suddenly swung down beside him to solicit them for his grandson. Legolas, Elladan, and Glorfindel also came to join their beaming circle, with impish ‘Las still holding court from grandfather’s lap. 

A rose-hued glow dawned on the horizon, though the sun had yet to sink entirely behind them. Each member was suddenly rapt to the seaside, still in reverence for the passing age. Tathren curled in close to his Echo, nestled his face in his sleek, ebony hair. He thought of his first glimpse of his beloved one, the first flame of his golden eyes, a swaddling babe in his arms. He thought of their tragic departure from Arda, of the loss of both their naneths, one to the death of men and one to precarious fate. He remembered every kiss they had shared, from his overture in the stormy, spelled orchard, to their pledge of love on the coral shelf, to the blistering embrace that sealed their binding. He hotly recalled the pride they’d felt at the founding of Gondolen, then Imladros, at the momentous births of their children. He let the effulgent flame of their binding surge within him, feeling the oneness they alone shared, knowing of the peerless light that had guided him through hundreds of years, through the sacred age that had seen them blessed and blissful. 

Surrounded, like petals around the bud of a rose, by those they loved best, Tathren and Echoriath kissed with breathless eloquence, as the beacon of the Fifth Age blazed across the sky. 

 

* * * 

A brief note, mellonen, to end this particular volume,

Though the manners and emotions known to the ancient ones may appear, on first reading, foreign to those so long away from the elders of our kind, I have no doubt that such a tale of love might move even the hearts of men, especially those descendent from my swordbrother Elros, who in their very natures secret away the elven impulse to nurture and to secure. In mind of kindling this forgotten kindness to all creatures, I have included three Further Tales to this blissful song of Tathren and Echoriath, which may further elucidate the trials, treasures, and rewards of deepest love. I hope your manly pupils and your own people come to cherish these tales as we do the dear ones within them. More than the facts of elven history, these stories possess in their very element the fundamentals of being.   
I humbly thank you for your patronage, as well as the gifts that will return with our honorable sailors. I look forward to future barters between us, to reforging ties too long severed between our lands. I wish you safe passage to Ithilien with this precious cargo, as well as continued peace in this fretful new age. 

 

May the Valar Bless,  
Erestor Cirdanion  
Loremaster of Telperion 

 

End of Of Elbereth’s Bounty


End file.
